MANILA, Philippines – Vice presidential candidate and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte on Monday, May 9, cast her vote in the 2022 election in her hometown. 

The outgoing mayor trooped to her precinct at the Daniel R. Aguinaldo National High School in Matina, Davao City. She cast her vote at past 9 am.

Duterte, 43, has led preference polls for vice president since she threw her hat in the race. 

She is the eldest daughter of the incumbent president, Rodrigo Duterte. 

Duterte initially sought reelection as Davao mayor but withdrew that bid and joined national party Lakas-CMD to file her candidacy as vice president via substitution. Lakas-CMD is part of the “UniTeam alliance,” which brings together two other national parties and Davao-based Hugpong ng Pagbabago. 

The alliance also brings together the oldest, biggest, and most familiar names in Philippine dynastic politics. 

Her standard-bearer, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., is perhaps the most famous – or infamous – in the alliance. He is the only son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose regime was marked by widespread human rights abuses and the theft of the country’s coffers.

Like Duterte, Marcos Jr. had been leading preference surveys in the elections. 

Allies and supporters of her father had wanted Sara Duterte to run for president in 2022. It’s a move that the Duterte clan – and numerous other political dynasties – had done in the past, but never at the national level. 

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Even as she topped very early preference polling for president, the younger Duterte opted instead to vie for the second-highest post of the land. 

President Duterte exits his presidency leaving behind a country that’s still reeling from over two years of varying degrees of lockdown because of COVID-19, with a healthcare system that’s been battered several times because of the pandemic. He has more personal issues to contend with, too. 

Looming over him is the threat of an International Criminal Court probe into the killings made in the name of his campaign against illegal drugs, both as president and as Davao mayor. 

Sara has promised to continue some of her father’s projects, including infrastructure and law enforcement, but has not gone into the finer details of her proposal. – Rappler.com