(UPDATED) Groups behind the “Run, Sara, Run” campaign believe that Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio will run for president in the May 2022 elections via People’s Reform Party (PRP), the political party founded by the late senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
Speculations went up a notch Monday, October 4, 2021, after former Cabinet secretary Leoncio Evasco took his oath as member of PRP.
Sources said Duterte-Carpio had asked Evasco, who served as first Cabinet secretary of President Rodrigo Duterte, to handle her campaign.
Evasco took his oath before lawyer Narciso Santiago Jr., PRP president and widower of Defensor-Santiago, with the party’s vice president Rey David and secretary-general Ariel Nepomuceno as witnesses.
The PRP teamed up with the Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP), a regional party founded by Duterte-Carpio, in the 2019 elections. The two groups signed an alliance agreement in December 2018.
In July 2021, Santiago declared support for Duterte-Carpio should she decide to run for president.
Santiago then said he believed that the Davao mayor adhered to the same principles espoused by his late wife.
Duterte-Carpio is seeking reelection as mayor of Davao City. She filed her certificate of candidacy (COC) in Davao City on October 2.
On the same day in Pasay City in Metro Manila, her father President Duterte announced his withdrawal from the vice presidential race and his retirement from politics.
The President gave way to his former long-time aide Senator Christopher Go, who filed his COC for vice president under the Cusi faction of the PDP-Laban.
Both the President and his daughter earlier said that only one Duterte will run for a national position.
The President on September 8 accepted the PDP-Laban nomination as vice presidential candidate.
The next day, on September 9, Duterte-Carpio declared that she was not running for a national position, citing her agreement with her father.
She also said her local party, HNP, will not help PDP-Laban in the May 2022 elections.
Substitution due to withdrawal is allowed until November 15, 2021. The Commission on Elections said political parties may replace their candidates before then.
President Duterte himself was a substitute candidate in the 2016 elections. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)