Duterte may hand reins to dictator Marcos’ son
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte could resign to make way for the son of ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos if a legal challenge to the 2016 vice presidential election is upheld.
Duterte, 73, who has often raised the possibility of stepping down, thinks Ferdinand Marcos Jr. “is one of the better qualified leaders to succeed him,” presidential spokesmanHarryRoque said at a briefing Thursday.
If Marcos “becomes vice president, perhaps the presidentwill make true hisword that he will step down,” Roque said.
Marcos won 14.1 million votes in the 2016 vice presidential race, an election that is conducted separately from the presidency in the Philippines, narrowly losing to Liberal Party candidate Leni Robredo. Marcos claims the vote was tainted bymassive cheating.
Duterte has said before that he might turn over the presidency toMarcos, whose sister he credits with supporting his presidential campaign. The triggers, he said, would include a failure to de- liver on his promises to crack down onnarcotics, crimeand corruption.
Marcos, 60, told BloomberglastOctober thathewas interested in following in his father’s footsteps.
“That’s what you want to be,” Marcos said. “Every private in the army wants to be ageneral. Everyjanitorwants to be a CEO.”
A former congressman, senator and governor of the northern province of Ilocos Norte, Marcos is one of the most divisive political figures in the Philippines, where roughly 3,000 people died and thousands more were tortured when his father suspended elections and declared martial law in the 1970s.
His appeal against the result is currently before the Supreme Court, sitting as the electoral tribunal, which has ordered a manual recount of the votes. A decision could still be years away. Aprevious challenge to to the 2010 vicepresidential election took almost six years to resolve.
“There’s really no way of knowing how long the case will last,” Dante Gatmaytan, aconstitutional lawprofessor at theUniversity of the Philippines, said. “Each case is dif- ferent, some cases go on dissolved because the parties have been elected to other offices.”
Gatmaytan said the removal in May of Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, an outspoken critic ofDuterte’s administration, was unlikely to affect the outcome of the challenge to the vice presidential election result.
“I understand why there might be some apprehension because the Supreme Court has never ruled against the president,” Gatmaytan said. “But the tribunal is not only made up of members of the Supreme Court.”
Duterte has repeatedly questioned Robredo’s suitability for the job. Robredo— the leader of the opposition — has said that she doesn’t want to dignify Duterte’s attacks againsther, and instead urged the president to focus on the economy.
Her camp was quick to downplay the chances of another Marcos as president. “President Duterte’s resignation will never happen because Mr. Marcos will never win his electoral protest,” the vice president’s lawyer, RomuloMacalintal, said in a statement.