Marcos gathers crowd of 140,000 in Cavite

Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio (left) and former Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. hold a rally at the General Trias Sports Complex in General Trias, Cavite, on Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (Photo from LAKAS-CMD)

MANILA, Philippines — Apparently embarrassed that Vice President Leni Robredo managed to gather almost 50,000 people at her campaign rally, Cavite Gov. Jonvic Remulla asked presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and his running mate Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte of UniTeam to return to the province.

“I asked them to come back,” Remulla said, referring to Marcos’ and Duterte’s first sortie in the province on Feb. 11. “Cavite has something to prove. Where Cavite goes, the country goes. So it has to start here.”

Remulla and other Cavite leaders organized the rally at the General Trias Sports Park — the same venue as Robredo’s on March 4 — and filled the stadium with up to 100,00 people, according to the city’s chief of police.

Remulla said the 100,000 were only the ones inside the stadium, and there were up to 40,000 more outside.

Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., who gave up his chairmanship of the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats when Duterte joined the party in November, said Marcos and Duterte is “assured of a big win in Cavite,” a province with 2.3 million voters.

Sen. Francis Tolentino, former mayor of Tagaytay City and a member of President Duterte’s Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan, also endorsed the tandem during their rallies in the province.

Cavite remains the second province with the largest number of voters, next to Cebu with its 3.2 million voters in 2019.

When Remulla was asked whether he could actually deliver 800,000 votes for the Marcos-Duterte tandem, he said: “Yabang lang ‘yon” (That’s just a boast), but it was not clear whether he was being sarcastic.

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