Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo, an archrival of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and staunch critic of his deadly drug war, yesterday said she would run for the top job, becoming the leading opposition candidate in a crowded election field.
Robredo has been under pressure from supporters and opposition groups to join next year’s presidential race, but she has been well behind the front-runners in opinion polls.
Analysts say the even-tempered former congresswoman could struggle.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“I will fight, we will fight,” Robredo, 56, said, declaring herself a presidential candidate.
“We will defeat the archaic and rotten style of politics,” she added.
President and vice president are elected separately in the Philippines. Robredo quit Duterte’s Cabinet less than six months after he was sworn in, after a presidential aide told her she had been barred from its meetings.
Her decision comes after her nemesis Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son and namesake of the country’s former dictator, said on Tuesday he would run for president.
Robredo narrowly defeated Marcos for the nation’s second-highest office in 2016, dealing a blow to the political aspirations of the powerful clan as they sought to rehabilitate their image.
Marcos — an ally of Duterte and a defender of the narcotics crackdown that has killed thousands of people — fought a nearly five-year legal battle challenging the vote, but lost in February when the Supreme Court rejected the protest.
Marcos was in second place behind Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, in a recent Pulse Asia Research poll, although she has denied plans to run.
Robredo was a distant sixth, trailing boxing great Manny Pacquiao and celebrity mayor Francisco Domagoso, who have confirmed they would seek the presidency; and Philippine Senator Grace Poe, who has not.
Most of the top candidates have supported the drug war, which is being investigated by the International Criminal Court as a possible crime against humanity.
Duterte has repeatedly attacked Robredo since taking power in 2016 on a promise to rid the country of drugs.
Among other things, she opposed Duterte’s plan to bring back the death penalty and his decision to allow the embalmed body of Ferdinand Marcos to be buried at the national heroes’ cemetery.
So far, more than 40 candidates have registered to run for president in the May election, but the field would narrow significantly in the coming months.
Election season kicked off this month, with the candidates flocking to the offices of the elections commission to file their nominations.
The process launched a typically noisy and deadly seven months of campaigning for more than 18,000 positions, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn caused by lockdowns expected to dampen the atmosphere.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS