Duterte wants to run for VP to seek immunity
MANILA: President Rodrigo Duterte admited he would run for vice president (VP) in the May 2022 elections to secure immunity from civil and criminal cases which his critics and opposition politicians had filed or threatened to file against him including the crimes against humanity pending before the UN International Criminal Court (ICC).
Duterte made the admission in his speech before the national council meeting of a faction of the ruling Pdp-laban political party held at the former US military airbase converted into a special economic zone in Pampanga province in Central Luzon.
Earlier,thefaction,organizedbyenergysecretary Alfonso Cusi, passed a resolution urging Duterte to run for vice president when his fixed six-year term as president as mandated by the Constitution is to expire in June 2022.
In his speech, Duterte cited threats of lawsuits from his critics, particularly former opposition senator Antonio Trillanes and retired Supreme Court (SC) justice Antonio Carpio who said the ICC prosecutor could use the president’s statements on the bloody and violent war on illegal drugs as “extrajudicial confessions.”
“The law says that if you are president, vice president you have immunity. Then I will just run for vice president,” Duterte told his supporters in the Pampanga meeting. “Ater that, I will run again for vice president, then vice president, then vice president.”
But as of Sunday, Malacanang Palace has yet to issue a statement on Duterte’s latest controversial declaration. In the past, the Palace had clarified that the president’s statement should be taken as a “joke.”
But this did not sit well with former congressman Neri Colmenares, the chairman of the militant partylist “Bayan Muna” (Country First), who denounced as “shameless” and “legally insane” Duterte’s plan to run for vice president in the May 2022 elections.
“Presidentduterte’sdeclarationtorunforthevice presidency in order to escape imprisonment ater his term (in 2022) is shameless and legally insane,” Colmenares said. “The people should not allow a person to become a vice president not to serve the country but for self-serving personal interests.”