Sara Duterte, facing impeachment anew, declares 2028 presidential bid
MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Sara Duterte declared on Wednesday, February 18, that she will run for president in 2028, making official what she had been floating — and then walking back — for over a year.
Duterte announced her planned candidacy in a speech that also delivered a sharp and direct rebuke of her former ally and running mate, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The vice president also refused to take questions from reporters after her speech.
"Ako si Sara Duterte, tatakbo bilang Pangulo ng Pilipinas (I'm Sara Duterte, running as president of the Philippines)," she said in a brief prepared statement.
The announcement comes over a year before the scheduled filing of candidacy for the May 2028 elections — and at least several months before Duterte herself had previously set as her own deadline.
As recently as November 2025, she told reporters she expected to announce her plans only in the "last quarter of 2026." In June last year, she was still publicly downplaying surveys that showed her as the frontrunner, saying 2028 is "far off."
Last week, in an interview in Davao City after her uncle's burial, the vice president expressed doubt on whether the country would still be standing by 2028 and refused to confirm a presidential run.
Before the declaration, a message vs Marcos
Duterte's actual announcement itself took a backseat to what she said before it. For several minutes, she laid out her case against the current administration. She accused Marcos of breaking his campaign promises mere months into his term. She also repeated her familiar criticism of the national budget, calling the 2025 appropriations as one "riddled with corruption."
She described the investigations into her office as "scripted," called her father's transfer to ICC detention a "kidnapping," and framed the corruption allegations against her as manufactured.
"Hindi ako kailanman natakot sa pagsira nila ng pangalan ko (I was never afraid of them destroying my name)," Duterte said.
Three new impeachment complaints against Duterte were filed in the House of Representatives earlier this month, after the Supreme Court voided the 2025 articles of impeachment for violating the Constitution's one-year bar on successive filings.
Announcing early has a precedent
Early presidential declarations are not unusual in Philippine politics. But candidates who show their hand too soon have, in recent years, not fared well in the polls.
The most instructive recent case is former Vice President Jejomar Binay, who confirmed his presidential ambitions as early as 2011 — nearly five years before the 2016 elections — and by March 2014 was already the runaway survey frontrunner.
But by election day, after a series of controversies related to corruption in Makati City, Binay placed fourth, well below Rodrigo Duterte.
In contrast, the vice president's father, former President Duterte, spent most of 2015 publicly saying he did not want to run, then filed his candidacy in November of that year, an eleventh-hour substitution that the Commission on Elections no longer allows. He won by a landslide, and his late entry was widely credited with keeping him out of rivals' crosshairs until the race had already shifted in his favor.
The vice president has been publicly signaling a possible presidential run by at least 2024.
In January 2025, she described herself as "seriously" considering the presidency. She repeated similar hints at an overseas Filipino community event in Hong Kong in March 2025, days before her father was arrested and flown to The Hague.
In her speech Wednesday, Duterte suggested the so-called sustained attacks from the Marcos administration left her little reason to wait to announce her planned candidacy.
She said as much, in Filipino: "Politicians usually avoid announcing early to avoid being targeted... but this administration had already been destroying her name for a long time."
What she's running on
Beyond the attack on Marcos, Duterte sketched a loose platform: an independent foreign policy that does not lean toward either the United States or China.
The vice president also suggested she'd take a harder line on tackling crime and drugs.
"Forgive me if crime, illegal drugs, and terrorism seem to be slowly approaching the doorsteps of our homes," she said in Filipino.
She framed her run in almost fatalistic terms. "It took me 47 years to understand that my life was never meant to be only mine," she said. "I offer my life, my strength, and my future in the service of our nation."
"I'm sorry if I helped elect BBM as President of the Philippines," Duterte said.
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