President Rodrigo Duterte’s political party has again urged him to run for vice president in the 2022 national elections.
The Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) on Monday passed a resolution to convince Duterte, the party chairman, to run for vice president and choose the party’s standard-bearer.
The resolution combined earlier petitions signed by PDP-Laban leaders and chapters across the country.
Lawyer Melvin Matibag, acting secretary of PDP-Laban, said if the president ran for vice-president, they would “give the president the free hand to choose his running mate.”
However, if Duterte did not run, Mabitag said, they would call for a national council meeting and party convention sometime in July to choose the party bet.
When asked for possible names for the party’s standard-bearer, Mabitag said there were many “choices,” but stressed that it would still depend on Duterte’s decision.
“I won’t name names,” Mabitag said, but later he dropped the name of Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles and Sen. Bong Go as a possible standard-bearers.
“Secretary Nograles is very much qualified to be [the] standard-bearer. I mean yung qualification ba. He can run a country. You’ve seen him perform as a secretary,” he said.
Nograles, when asked for comment, did not directly answer if he would accept or decline the post. But he said that by “sticking” with party policies, “you can not go wrong.”
“We have total faith, trust, and confidence in him (Duterte) in selecting the standard-bearer because we believe in the president,” he explained.
Mabitag clarified that there were other choices aside from Nograles, adding that any party stalwart can be a standard-bearer, like Go.
Raul Lambino, PDP-Laban vice president for internal affairs, clarified that the party chairman can choose a non-member as his standard bearer, referring to Davao City Sara Carpio-Duterte.
“We did not limit the choice to be made by the president,” Lambino said, adding that the party has strong ties with the Nacionalista Party, the National Unity Party, Nationalist People’s Coalition, Lakas-CMD, and Carpio-Duterte’s party, Hugpong Pagbabago.
“Sara Duterte is not from PDP,” Mabitag said. “But don’t forget, Sara is very friendly to PDP.” Ryan Sorote