Vice President Leni Robredo said the opposition must field a single presidential candidate in 2022, either herself or someone else, adding failure to do so would ensure victory for whoever is anointed by President Rodrigo Duterte.
Duterte is still popular and Robredo said the party machinery that propelled her to the vice presidency in 2016 had been nearly decimated. The vice president was asked during a forum of the Cambridge University Filipino society about her decision-making process for next year's elections.
"A lot of people are rushing me to make a decision already but it's not that easy," Robredo said. The "feasibility" of a presidential run given her current resources is the top consideration, she said.
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What is important is to unite the opposition, "whether the candidate is myself or some other person," she said. Robredo said she was not an "active participant" in efforts by 1Sambayan and several groups to field a single candidate because she was busy with pandemic response work.
"We have to accept that the president is again, a very popular president. To have many different candidates running against, in the elections, will only ensure another six years of victory of this same kind of governance that the last five years has given us," she said.
"I'm not sure it's to the best interest of the country," she said.
Robredo polled sixth in Pulse Asia's Feb. 22 to March 3 poll of possible presidential candidates. Duterte's daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, led the field.
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Robredo said the pandemic "exacerbated our need for a president who is there on the ground, who is hands on, who is not afraid to roll up his sleeves and be witht the people as we battle this and go back to normal in the soonest possible time."
The current pandemic response appeared "siloed," lacking a whole of government approach, she said.
"Because this crisis is unprecedented, it will need a president to be on top of everything," she said.
