Sara ‘open’ to Palace bid; PDP-Laban row escalates

Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The political landscape has turned volatile with Sen. Manny Pacquiao and his allies in the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) flexing muscle, and first daughter and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte saying she was open to running for president in 2022.

Announced only on Friday, Pacquiao, PDP-Laban acting president, has unilaterally expelled Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi and two others from the party chaired by President Duterte and currently wracked by feuding camps. Cusi is the party’s vice chair.

Pacquiao made his move just before he flew to the United States last week to train for a coming fight and just as the relationship between him and Mr. Duterte turned sour with a barbed exchange over government corruption.

In explaining his move, Pacquiao accused Cusi of betraying party bylaws by endorsing the presidential candidacy of Mayor Duterte, a nonmember, and pushing her father to be her running mate.

Pacquiao, who is rumored to be planning a presidential run himself, and Cusi, who has publicly expressed openness to backing either Mayor Duterte or the President’s longtime aide, Sen. Bong Go, for president in 2022, have been locked in a battle for control of PDP-Laban.

Sought for comment, Cusi said: “Senator Pacquiao demeans himself by resorting to underhanded tactics. Whoever advises him clearly doesn’t care about him and his reputation. I pity Senator Pacquiao, he is clearly misguided.”

Cusi also said the party “activities” planned for July 16 and July 17 would “push through as scheduled and as confirmed by our party chairman.”

Visiting Cebu City on Friday, Mayor Duterte was asked in an interview if she was open to seeking the presidency.

She replied: “Yes, opo”— the first time she made a categorical statement on the issue. But she said there was no final decision yet.

“What is important now is that we know the sentiments of the people and what they really want,” she said in Cebuano.

One of three resolutions issued by Pacquiao and adopted by his party camp on July 3 states: “[Cusi] is … manipulating the party to support the Duterte-Duterte tandem, which is a blatant admission of supporting Sara Duterte Carpio for president, who is not a member of the party.”

“He is guilty of having allegiance to a candidate and her political ideals and party,” it says of Cusi.

The resolution points out that Mr. Duterte’s daughter “does not even believe in federalism,” one of PDP-Laban’s core advocacies.

It also takes issue with the fact that Mayor Duterte, who formed her own Hugpong ng Pagbabago regional party three years ago, “fielded candidates against and opposed official candidates of PDP-Laban in the 2019 elections,” and “she is vehemently opposed to joining the PDP-Laban party.”

Also expelled from the party were PDP-Laban secretary general Melvin Matibag and membership committee head Astra Naik, for “showing allegiance to a political party apart from PDP-Laban.”

Under the PDP-Laban constitution, the party president is not authorized to sanction or discipline erring members.

Full power

To fix this, the first resolution issued by Pacquiao dated June 12 and adopted on June 25 seeks to grant the party president the right to “do and or perform any and all acts necessary to maintain the unity of the party.”

It also gives him “full power and authority to do and perform all and every act and thing whatsoever requisite and necessary to be done in and about the premises in order to achieve the purpose and objective of this resolution.”

The resolutions were made public by Pacquiao’s camp on Friday.

“I don’t wanna give credence to their actions,” Matibag told reporters in a Viber thread.

He said Pacquiao’s camp had no authority to discipline PDP-Laban’s national officers and was “irrelevant.”

Signatories

“It’s just a way for them to hype their status in the media,” Matibag said. “July 17 national assembly will be the day of their reckoning. We encourage them to challenge the actions of the national assembly. Legally speaking, they don’t have any fighting chance.”

One of the resolutions seeks to preempt the national assembly called by Cusi’s camp by declaring all notices on the meeting “unauthorized and void.”

It also nullifies the proceedings of an earlier meeting presided over by Cusi, on May 31, when the group issued a resolution urging Mr. Duterte to run for vice president.

Besides Pacquiao, the other PDP-Laban officials who signed the resolutions include acting secretary general and Deputy Speaker Arnolfo Teves Jr., national treasurer Evan Rebadulla and executive director Ronwald Munsayac.

PDP-Laban executive vice president and Speaker Lord Allan Velasco’s signature is conspicuously absent in two of the three resolutions. The third does not include his name at all.

Sen. Koko Pimentel, a former PDP-Laban president who has sided with Pacquiao in the latter’s rift with Cusi, is not among the signatories. He did not respond to the Inquirer’s request for comment.

With the expulsion of the three, “all rights and privileges of Cusi, Matibag and Naik as members of the party and all their positions or authorities in the Party are … terminated,” according to the resolution.

The members were told “to cease and desist from following, supporting or giving legitimacy to any directive, resolution, notices, communications or actions of [Cusi, Matibag and Naik]…”

Closed-door meeting

Mayor Duterte said she was grateful to her supporters, including those who put up tarps urging her to seek the presidency.

“I thank supporters here in Cebu for their trust and confidence. That is one of the reasons why I am here, to ask the people what they really want,” she said.

The mayor had a closed-door meeting with Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia for about two hours at the capitol. She said it was a simple courtesy call with no particular discussions on politics.

Duterte said she had told Garcia that she would be back in Cebu soon with her party mates for more consultations with supporters.

—With a report from Ronnel W. Domingo