Philippines Vice President Leni Robredo on Thursday declared her intention to succeed President Rodrigo Duterte in 2022.
Gatekeepers News reports that Robredo made her intention known in a speech delivered in Tagalog.
“I’m officially offering myself as candidate for president in the 2022 elections. I will take on the fight. We will fight together,” Robredo said as she hopes to replicate her ‘come-from-behind’ 2016 victory in an election reshaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The challenge we face is clear to everyone. We’ve seen the lies and the abuse. They have the money and the machinery.”
Robredo, 56, has been Duterte’s vice president since they were both sworn into office in 2016. But she has locked horns with Duterte on several issues and has labelled his so-called deadly war on drugs a “failure”.
Gatekeepers News reports that in the Philippines, Presidents and vice presidents are elected separately which usually produce candidates from rival parties.
Robredo on Thursday further made the difference between her and Duterte glaring when she declared that “we will defeat the old and rotten type of politics. We will hand back to ordinary Filipinos the power to make change.”
Meanwhile, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son and namesake of the Philippine strongman, who was removed following a popular revolt in 1986, has also joined the presidential race.
