MANILA, Philippines — Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio will push for mandatory military service for Filipinos aged 18 years old if she wins as vice president in the 2022 polls.
Duterte-Carpio, in a virtual caravan on Wednesday, said she would use the Office of the Vice President to talk to the Congress to “make military service for all 18 years old, male and female, mandatory in our country.”
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She explained that her proposal is not like the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps — that her father, President Rodrigo Duterte also wanted to be revived but did not materialize — as a mandatory subject, nor would it be a month-long training or for weekends.
“It should be that all our 18 years old, when you reach 18 years old, you will be given a subsidy you will be asked to serve our country in our Armed Forces of the Philippines,” Duterte-Carpio added partly in Filipino.
In 2018, the president signed a joint resolution of Congress to increase pay for the military, the police and other uniformed personnel. Under it, a private, a fire or jail officer, a police officer and an apprentice seaman or seaman third class would receive a monthly base pay of P29,668 starting Jan. 1, 2018.
She and her running-mate, presidential aspirant Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, were responding to a question posed by a Sangguniang Kabataan councilor on how they can use their offices to tap the youth for nation-building, and programs during their stint in local government that they can scale up to the national level.
Marcos, for his part, said he will focus on the creation of jobs for the youth so they can take part in the economy’s recovery, especially amid the pandemic.
Disaster preparedness
Duterte-Carpio, who has more than a decade of LGU services in her belt, said if she wins vice presidency, she would replicate the disaster preparedness training the Sangguniang Kabataan in Davao City conducted.
She said she told the SK in the southern city to stop creating basketball leagues, local beauty pageants and even dance contests during fiesta, as money from the government is wasted in them.
“We focused our SK in Davao City on disaster preparedness… [We] created a community emergency response team training. Before the pandemic, we had five batches, 200 graduates for Davao City, on disaster preparedness, fire, first aid,” the Davao City mayor continued.
They also put up youth and adolescents health development center that focuses on the “current problems” of the youth, including mental wellness, gender identification, teenage pregnancy, out-of-school youths and increase in incidents of HIV in the young.
The Marcos-Duterte-Carpio tandem, dubbed UniTeam, led the Pulse Asia pre-elections survey in December 2021.