Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wants his daughter, Sara, to abandon any interest in seeking the presidency after his term ends.
“And my daughter, they are prodding her to run. I told them: ‘My daughter is not running,’” Duterte said this week, per the Philippine Star. “It’s not for a woman.”
Philippine voters seem to disagree: Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio leads the field in a public poll released last month. Her father — who, in reflecting on his own tenure has said, “my only sin is the extrajudicial killings” — maintained that the job would “make [her] crazy” if she won the office.
“The emotional setup of a woman and a man is totally different,” he said. “That is the sad story. But there are people who are insisting.”
The younger Duterte has a reputation for being “more organized” than her father, according to local political analysts, but other observers eye her warily.
“She is different enough from Duterte for us not to panic over her potential presidency, but she’s similar enough to ensure that the institutional damages inflicted on our liberal democratic traditions will not be reversed,” Richard Javad Heydarian, author of the book The Rise of Duterte, said last year.
The elder Duterte has delivered a series of shocks to the U.S.-Philippine alliance during his tenure while making overtures to China that startle American analysts who identify the Philippines as one of the most strategically significant allies in the Indo-Pacific region.
“The alliance is never going to be on an entirely stable footing while Duterte is in office, but he’s only going to be in office until mid-2022,” Center for Strategic and International Studies analyst Gregory Poling said recently. “You need to rebuild that trust in a new administration in the Philippines.”
