Manila: Supporters and critics of Rodrigo Duterte’s plan to run for the Philippine presidency clashed on Tuesday, before the Davao City mayor has even taken all the steps necessary to confirm his candidacy.
Duterte’s prospective vice-presidential running mate, Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, traded barbs with Senator Grace Poe and Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero who allegedly maligned the Davao City mayor in their statements.
“Those who are criticising the planned candidacy of Mayor Duterte for president are afraid of the coming change and this is why they are maligning him,” Cayetano said.
Poe, fresh from her first round victory after the Senate Electoral Tribunal last week when the body ruled that she is eligible to run for the presidency because she satisfies the citizenship requirement, had said that Duterte was using her disqualification case as a pretext so that the latter can run in the May 2016 polls.
Poe still has to contend with four legal challenges put before the Senate Electoral Tribunal questioning her eligibility to run for the presidency.
For his part, Duterte had said early on that Poe is not eligible to run for the presidential election because doing so would violate the constitutional requirements on residency as well as birthright of being a “natural born” Filipino.
Poe, after becoming a naturalised American in 2006, returned to the Philippines in 2010. She ran for a senate seat and won by an overwhelming number of votes in the 2013 elections.
The 70-year-old Duterte, who earlier claimed to be planning to retire to be with his ailing wife, had said that he would run for the presidency if only to oppose Poe.
Cayetano, a lawyer, said: “It is clear to Mayor Duterte and me that somebody who is not a natural born citizen cannot run in the elections. Is it correct for somebody who had already pleaded her allegiance to the United States to return to the country and suddenly become a president? This kind of theatrics should not be allowed.”
The election contentions had been focused on Poe, whom surveys claim to be the leading choice for the presidency in 2016, with Duterte serving as a proverbial whipping post.
Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal was quoted in reports as saying, while Duterte has not yet filed his candidacy for president, reports are rife that he would join the elections as a substitute candidate for Martin Dino who was said to have made a “clerical error” in his application for candidacy with the Comelec.
As Poe’s attention is focused to deflecting legal questions to her citizenship, the other candidates to the presidency — ruling Liberal Party bet Mar Roxas and opposition standard bearer Jejomar Binay, the Vice President — are both focused on their respective campaigns.