Salceda says Sara gunning for presidency
REP. Joey Salceda (PDP-Laban, Albay) yesterday said presidential daughter Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte has decided to run for president in 2022 and has sought his full support for her candidacy.
The younger Duterte, 42, reportedly reached the decision after President Duterte blatantly said in a speech last January that the presidency is not a job for women.
“She (Sara) did not have to agonize over it because she knows she is capable. She is both tough and right. If ever she needs help, she can count on my friendship and loyal advice,” Salceda told reporters.
Salceda, chairman of the powerful House committee on ways and means and an economist, said the President’s daughter expressed her intention to seek the country’s highest office during an exchange of text messages yesterday.
The administration lawmaker said the mayor “left no doubt that she has crossed the Rubicon (and) it is 100 percent certain that she is running in 2022.”
“You have always been amiable in the NEDA Board when I was a neophyte mayor,” the mayor told Salceda during the exchange. “True that I make things happen just by sheer grit and determination but I do not have the level of intellectual brilliance such as yours so I am honored to have you on my side because I am only as good as the friends I keep. I will shine because I am under your light.”
It was not clear what changed the presidential daughter’s mind because just a month ago, she said she was not seeking the presidency next year.
Being president would enable Sara to protect her father from the International Criminal Court (ICC) that has launched an inquiry into his war against the illegal drug trade, which is being blamed by some human rights groups and critics for alleged extra-judicial killings.
Salceda advised the President’s daughter to go for the presidency: “As (sportswear brand) Nike says, ‘Just Do it. You will win.’”
“I look forward to continuing my exchanges with Mayor Sara on how to improve the socioeconomic conditions of our people. It is her final decision to make, but I am now certain she intends run. When she does, she can count on my full support,” Salceda said.
In 2019, the mayor drew flak for saying that honesty should not be an election issue because there is no candidate who does not lie. She was then reacting to senatorial candidates from the “Otso Diretso” opposition slate, who slammed then administration senatorial bet Imee Marcos for lying about graduating with honors from the University of the Philippines College of Law and receiving a degree from Princeton University.
Sara’s entry in the presidential race is expected to split the ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), the acting president of which is Sen. Manny Pacquiao who is widely known to be eyeing the presidency.
Pacquiao has begun criticizing the President, recently expressing dismay over Duterte’s alleged defeatist stance on the country’s territorial dispute with China.
In return, PDP-Laban’s Bulacan chapter even slammed party executive director Ron Munsayac for defending Pacquiao over his criticisms against the President who is the party’s chair.
Salceda said the Sara, who belongs to the Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod Hugpong ng Pagbabago party (Hugpong), is being “too humble” about her abilities, especially in economic policy.
He pointed out that Sara was chair of the Regional Development Council (RDC) chair for the Davao region during the time it maintained the lowest poverty incidence in Mindanao.
Salceda noted that in 2015, the first poverty survey after her term as RDC chair from 2011 to 2013 showed that Davao region’s poverty incidence went down by 7.2 percent, which he said meant that the number of subsistence-poor families in the region declined by 40,000 families or 200,000 Filipinos.
Salceda said he sees in Davao City what the “Enlightenment” philosophers Locke, Hobbes, and Rosseau called “the social contract” between the leaders and the people.
Salceda said the President, when he was the city’s mayor, made the conditions for such “social compact” possible “when he pacified the city, then a hot spot for insurgency and organized crime.”
“With peace, Davao was able to overcome the Hobbesian “war of all against all” and the people could trust each other and work with each other better. Mayor Sara fulfills the Lockean (philosophy) by keeping the Davao City government strong to protect the peace.
Davao City is brimming with energy, far from the economic malaise it suffered in the 1980s,” he said.
