President Marcos worried about VP Sara reversing his policies

In case she becomes president

MANILA, Philippines — President Marcos does not regard as a mistake his decision to run with his ally-turned-arch critic Vice President Sara Duterte in the 2022 elections, but is “very much” concerned that his policies might be reversed if she wins the presidency.

“No, I don’t think so,” Marcos said when asked by Bloomberg Television whether he thought running on the same ticket as Duterte was a mistake.

“I think for the time that it was, that was the best thing that we could do. We had the same idea of what needed to be done in the government. Maybe that’s changed, but if you look at it in the context of that period, I think that was the right thing to do still,” he added.

Marcos and Duterte’s UniTeam alliance scored a landslide victory.

Cracks in their alliance soon appeared, including First Lady Liza Marcos’ revelation that she viewed the Vice President negatively after she laughed when her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, accused President Marcos of being a drug addict.

In June 2024, Vice President Duterte resigned as education secretary and vice chair of the anti-insurgency task force further highlighting her souring relationship with Marcos.

Tensions between the Marcos and Duterte camps reached a new peak when Sara disclosed that she had asked someone to kill Marcos, Liza and former House speaker Martin Romualdez if a supposed assassination plot against her succeeds.

The alleged plot to kill Marcos is among the allegations cited in the impeachment complaint against Duterte, who was impeached for the second time last month by the House of Representatives.

In the same interview, Marcos admitted to being worried about the possibility of Duterte undoing his policies if she succeeds him.

“We are trying to reform the bureaucracy. These things don’t get done instantly. And it’s very, very easy to go off the rails. It is continuity that we aspire for, that we dream of, that we work for. And that continuity has to go on. Otherwise, we go back to doing business the old way,” the President said.

Pressed if there is any chance of him mending ties with the Vice President, Marcos said he does not see the present political situation as a war.

“I’m not conducting any more political war against anyone. I’m just trying to do my job. It is par for the course that you will be attacked, that you will be criticized. All I worry about is work,” he said.

“Everyone is saying there’s elections in a couple of years. And of course we have to attend to that. But I think it is not entirely accurate to describe that... there are warring families. The response is really to leave politics aside. Because the work of national development is a million times more important.”

‘Continuity is key’

Marcos expressed belief that continuity was the key to the success of some economies in the region.

“But the way our Constitution is written, it actually encourages a lack of continuity. And that’s a problem. The term for local government is three years. When I was a congressman – I first became a congressman – it takes you a few months to learn the business, as it were, and to make your connections, the network, etcetera,” the Chief Executive said.

Marcos acknowledged that it is not easy for those “not particularly favored in the majority” to pass a law within a year and a half.

“After that period, you hear that there’s somebody in your district beginning to campaign and he’s going to oppose you in the next election. So you have to go back to your district to take care of that,” he explained.

Filipinos have a “small-town attitude” that extends even at the national level, wherein everything that a previous official had done was deemed wrong by the incumbent, he noted.

“There’s a stop and go. That really gets in the way. Continuity is the key. And that is the only way for us to strengthen our institutions. Look at the more developed democracies. Whatever happens in politics, government continues to function,” Marcos said.