Confusing the enemy

Are they confusing the enemy, or are they simply confused?

This question popped up after former president Rodrigo Duterte contradicted his daughter, Vice President Sara, denying her claim that he would seek a Senate seat in the 2025 midterm elections.

Speaking to reporters at a rally in Tacloban City over the weekend, the former president reiterated what he has been saying since stepping down from power – that he was retiring from public office.

“I won’t go back to politics. I’m done. I’m old. I’m no longer popular. I don’t have money to spend, I have nothing,” Duterte said, adding that all he has is cockiness: “Yabang lang meron ako.”

He looks haggard these days, and of course older, so perhaps he’s telling the truth. But skeptics point out that Duterte also said he would not seek the presidency in 2016, when he was in fact already cobbling together his Cabinet team as early as the start of 2015, according to some quarters.

VP Inday Sara recently said her father along with her brothers, Davao Congressman Paolo and Mayor Sebastian, would all run for the Senate next year, and that “Baste” would seek the presidency in 2028.

“You believed her? My God, she’ll take you for a ride if you’re not asking the right questions,” the former president said in the vernacular in Tacloban. “Besides, where can you find a father and his two sons running together for the Senate? What will we do in the Senate?”

He said Filipinos should not believe the VP because “she is just like me, but I have mellowed since I’m old.”

What he meant exactly by his daughter being just like him is unclear.

*      *      *

Whether the VP was lying or just joking about her family’s political plans, testing the waters or confusing their opponents will become clear only in the coming months, with the approach of the period for filing certificates of candidacy for the May 2025 polls.

VP Sara has since clarified that there is no final family decision yet on whether her brother Baste would seek the presidency in 2028.

She is still seen as the family’s bet for the nation’s highest post, despite her continuing slide in the surveys.

Her father, however, had this to say in Tacloban: “They worry about Inday? Inday, don’t seek the presidency. If you are hearing this, avoid it. Give it to ambitious ones instead.”

Is he referring to the tambaloslos who was advised to rein in his ambitions last year by the VP? According to the “Marites” grapevine, the VP’s post about the mythical monster with oversized cojones of Visayan lore raised the hackles of the person who felt alluded to, Marcos 2.0’s presumptive presidential bet for 2028, Speaker Martin Romualdez.

The VP subsequently saw the House of Representatives junking her proposed P650 million in confidential funds for the DepEd and the Office of the Vice President for this year. For 2025, she will likely have to settle for a much reduced OVP budget, just like her predecessor Leni Robredo.

*      *      *

All these recent statements from the VP and her father make you wonder: do the Dutertes discuss their political plans as a family?

Rodrigo Duterte and his headstrong daughter are not known to be close. At the VP’s inaugural in Davao City in 2022, there seemed to be an iceberg between them as they stood on stage together with Sara’s mom Elizabeth Zimmerman, with a sullen Duterte looking like he wanted to flee.

It was well known at the time that Duterte had wanted to field his loyal aide, Bong Go, as president, with Inday Sara as running mate. Inday would have none of it; it’s well known that there’s no love lost between her and Go.

When Inday decided instead to team up with the Solid North, her father reportedly wanted her to be the UniTeam’s standard bearer, since she was rating higher in the surveys than Bongbong Marcos. Again she brushed aside her father’s wish and agreed to slide down to the VP race.

So it’s not surprising that she and her father are saying different things today about their family’s political plans.

The VP said her mother had given the green light to the Senate aspirations of Paolo and Baste. That could make the former president, whose marriage to Zimmerman has been annulled, even more averse to the idea.

The confusion – or seeming confusion – should prove beneficial for their opponents, who are currently coalescing behind the administration (and its enormous resources) at least for the midterm races.

With the family members unable to speak with one voice, there isn’t even any need for a super coalition between the administration and its traditional pink / yellow / left-leaning and red opponents, as suggested by former senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who worries about a possible return to power of the Dutertes.

Considering this traditional opposition’s showing in the 2022 elections, even the Dutertes should know only too well that there is strength in unity, while those who are divided fall.