Obviously, Marcos would not be persuaded, or allow himself to be even vaguely threatened.

Marcos may also have been reminded that his candidacy needed yet to be approved by the Commission on Elections, which happens to be packed with Duterte appointees and now looking into his previous conviction for tax evasion, normally a cause for automatic disqualification from holding public office. Since Duterte can ill afford taking a chance on a surrogate president who is not family, his deal presumably was for Marcos to run for vice president, running mate to Sara.

Apart yet from all that, Marcos had good poll numbers. In fact, Marcos was Duterte’s openly preferred choice for vice president, over his own running mate in the 2016 election, Alan Peter Cayetano. After all, he was a Duterte ally and his late father, the dictator, a Duterte idol. But even a co-opted Supreme Court and Congress won’t be any help in the case brought against him in the International Criminal Court, for thousands of deaths in his war on drugs.Įvidently, the Dutertes tried to strike a deal with Marcos.

For any hope of easy time, if not outright avoidance of culpability, once prosecuted for various wrongdoing (murder, corruption, national betrayal), Duterte must be able to keep enough of the power and influence that allowed him to rule pretty much as he pleased. In any case, dynastic interests have carried the day. She picks a different party from that of her father and declares herself in tandem not with Go but with Ferdinand Marcos Jr., himself of a different party but without a running mate. Indeed, at one point, she said she was not running for any national position and preferred to seek reelection as mayor of her native Davao City.īeing a dynastic heiress, she is at pains to prove she is her own person. Supposedly, legitimate daughter Sara resents her father, not to mention his common-law family, and Go, the favorite son not of his own blood, and is reluctant to involve herself in his politics. Whether it’s for show or for real, an open row is playing out within the Duterte dynasty.

The brave cast desperate measures