Cayetano remains hopeful for Duterte candidacy

Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano remains hopeful that Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte will run for president next year.

Cayetano continues to talk to Duterte, although not necessarily about the elections, the senator said at the weekly Pandesal Forum at the Kamuning Bakery in Quezon City yesterday.

Duterte’s statement last Sunday that only God could say if he will become president has given Cayetano a sliver of hope that the mayor would change his mind.

“There is still December,” Cayetano said, referring to the deadline for the filing of substitute candidates of the political parties.

“Meaning, he is open and leaving it up to the Lord,” he said.

Duterte has repeatedly stated that he has no intention of running for president.

Speculation about the possibility of Duterte joining the presidential race in December as a substitute candidate came up after Martin Diño of the Partido Demokratiko PilipinoLakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) filed his COC for president at the last hour on Friday.

Duterte technically has until December to come up with a final decision because a political party could still file a substitute candidate for president on or before that deadline, according to Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, PDP-Laban president.

Duterte is PDP- Laban’s presidential candidate, but he has refused to commit to this undertaking, Pimentel said.

He has not commented about Diño’s move to file his COC and if this was meant to pave the way for Duterte’s possible entry as a presidential candidate later on.

Cayetano said he is hoping Duterte would heed the clamor for him to run for president.

“For me, only Mayor Duterte can offer something different, something game changing. Only he has a different perspective in addressing problems. Some will say that you really just need a tandem, but even if he chooses someone else as his vice president, I will still support him.”

Cayetano is running for vice president with no presidential candidate and no support from the Nacionalista Party, of which he is a member.

Duterte’s hesitance to run for president appears to stem from family, particularly his wife who is reportedly ailing, Cayetano said.

He sees no downside to Duterte later changing his mind because he has not made any statements about running for president.

Meanwhile, Quezon City Rep. Winston Castelo denied yesterday having anything to do with the rumor that Duterte has throat cancer.

He made the clarification in the light of a recent radio interview in which Duterte linked him, and indirectly the Liberal Party, to a journalist who wrote about the mayor’s rumored affliction, Castelo said in a statement.

He said he knows the journalist since he is his constituent, but that he has no connection to the media practitioner’s story.

“I am an active member of the Liberal Party and I have no knowledge of any demolition job against anyone,” he said.

“Neither do I believe that this erroneous information about Mayor Duterte’s health came from any person associated with the party.”

Castelo said LP standardbearer Manuel Roxas II and Duterte “are both gentlemen of the highest caliber who have devoted themselves to the public with utmost decency.”

“I even nominated the mayor from Davao City for the post of Metro Manila traffic czar and secretary of the Department of the Interior and Local Government when Secretary Roxas vacated it to accept the nomination of the Liberal Party to be its presidential candidate.”