THE PRESIDENCY is not a sanctuary. Vice President Sara Duterte should know that.
The highest office in the land cannot be pursued while serious questions about public accountability remain unresolved.
Yet, despite the elections being two years away and with ongoing impeachment complaints, Sara Duterte has declared her candidacy for presidency in the 2028 elections.
Historically, the Dutertes have long had a stable approval rating from Filipinos; they specifically enjoy solid grassroot support in the Visayas and Mindanao.
The Vice President’s short stint as Education secretary has been marred by multiple impeachment complaints, many of them centered on her controversial use of confidential and intelligence funds.
In 2022 and 2023, her offices were granted hundreds of millions of pesos in confidential allocations; P125 million for the Office of the Vice President in 2022 alone was reportedly spent within just 11 days. The Department of Education under her leadership was also allocated P150 million in confidential funds in 2023, despite not being a security or intelligence agency.
Even then, what was even more shocking was that all of this intelligence fund went into alleged recipients with dubious names such as “Mary Grace Piattos,” “Chippy MacDonald,” and “Fernando Tempura”—widely seen as “ghost beneficiaries” tied to non-existent programs, echoing past controversies over ghost flood-control projects.
Meanwhile, the Department of Education (DepEd), already grappling with learning losses, classroom shortages, and underpaid teachers, faces a deepening crisis of public trust. At a time when transparency and meaningful reforms are urgently needed, the public education system is increasingly overshadowed by concerns over opaque expenditures and outright graft and corruption.
Impeachment complaints are not political ornaments. They are constitutional mechanisms designed precisely when accountability at the highest levels of government is called into question. Even if political arithmetic prevents these complaints from prospering in Congress, their existence matters. They reflect a serious doubt of public confidence that cannot be brushed aside by campaign slogans or popularity surveys.
And now, the possibility of a 2028 presidential run raises the stakes dramatically.
As Vice President Sara Duterte edges closer to a 2028 presidential bid, the country must confront a question that is heavier than campaign machinery and louder than political rallies: Have we truly reckoned with what the Duterte era has cost us? Because 2028 is not just another election year. It is a crossroads.
Sara Duterte carries with her the shadowy legacy of the administration of her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte – a period defined by a brutal war on drugs that left thousands dead.
Mothers buried sons without trials. Children grew up without fathers. Entire communities learned to fear the knock on the door at night by Duterte’s extra-judicial executioners.
Beyond the bloodshed, there was the coarsening of public discourse: attacks on media institutions, open hostility toward critics, and a political climate where dissent was often branded as communist destabilization. Institutions meant to serve as checks and balances were tested. Some bent. Some broke.
This is the legacy that inevitably shadows any Duterte candidacy.
To be clear: Sara Duterte is not her father. But she cannot run from the political brand that carried her to national office. Nor can the nation pretend that 2028 exists in isolation from the unresolved trauma of the past decade.
This is what makes the stakes in 2028 dangerously high.
Can the country afford another presidency under the same political banner that once defined an era of bloodshed and division?
If we reduce 2028 to personality, machinery, and nostalgia, we risk forgetting the mothers who mourned, the communities that trembled in fear, and the democratic norms that were stretched to their limits, if not totally discarded and waylaid. We risk signaling that state violence can be politically survivable. That institutional strain can be electorally rewarded.
The Palace is not merely a seat of power. It is a symbol of the nation’s moral direction. Before any campaign slogan echoes, we, Filipinos, must ask: What does another Duterte presidency say about what we are willing to tolerate? About what we are willing to forget?
The Philippines in 2028 will not be the Philippines of campaign theatrics. It will be a nation confronting mounting debt, intensifying climate disasters, and escalating geopolitical tensions in the West Philippine Sea—tensions exacerbated by past policies that shamelessly kowtowed to Beijing at the expense of national sovereignty. It will also face a fragile education system still struggling to recover. Leadership in that context cannot afford ethical ambiguity.
A presidential bid under the cloud of unresolved constitutional complaints risks sending a dangerous message: that political ambition can outpace accountability; that public office can be escalated even when public trust is strained.
If we normalize the idea that allegations involving confidential public funds can simply be politically weathered until the next election cycle, we erode the very safeguards meant to protect democratic governance. The presidency must not become a refuge from public scrutiny and accountability.
The presidency demands a leader whose record invites confidence rather than suspicion, whose stewardship of public funds is beyond question, and whose ascent to power does not hinge on institutional amnesia.
Malacañang is not an escape route from controversy. It is a seat of public trust. And trust, once fractured, must be restored—not bypassed.
Before the Palace, there must be reckoning.
