LAHORE MIRROR (Monitoring Desk)– Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has said he will not run for vice president in next year’s elections and will retire from politics after the end of his term.
Duterte announced the surprise decision on Saturday after accompanying his former longtime aide, Senator Bong Go, who instead filed his own candidacy for the vice presidency at a Commission on Elections centre.
“The overwhelming … sentiment of the Filipinos is that I am not qualified and it would be a violation of the constitution to circumvent the law, the spirit of the constitution” to run for the vice presidency, Duterte said.
“Today I announce my retirement from politics.
Philippine presidents are limited by the constitution to a single six-year term and opponents had said they would question the legality of Duterte’s announced vice presidential run before the Supreme Court.
Soon after his announcement, Duterte indicated his daughter Sara Duterte-Carpio would run alongside Go.
He was asked by a broadcast journalist: “So is it clear, Sara-Go?”
Duterte said in response: “It is Sara-Go.”
Duterte-Carpio, who replaced her father as mayor of Davao, said last month she was not running for higher office next year because she and her father had agreed only one of them would run for national office in 2022.
When asked to confirm what the president said, Duterte-Carpio’s spokesperson, Mayor Christina Garcia Frasco told the Reuters news agency that “the extent of my knowledge is also what was reported in local news. We have no comment on the same.”
Go did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
