DAVAO City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is standing pat on his decision not to run for President in the May 9, 2016 elections, his executive assistant said Friday.
“Nothing has changed,” said Duterte’s executive assistant, Christopher Lawrence Go, after the presidential candidate of the PDP-Laban, Martin Diño, withdrew and named the 70-year-old mayor as his replacement.
Go said Duterte had nothing to do with Diño’s decision, and that Duterte’s “soul searching continues this All Soul’s Day.”
Go also said advertisements showing Duterte with vice presidential candidate Senator Alan Peter Cayetano “came out of friendship” and not any political motives.
PDP-Laban officials recently announced that Duterte would be the party’s substitute standard bearer if Diño withdraws or is disqualified by the Commission on Elections.
The party passed two resolutions signed by all members in connection with the party’s nomination. The first resolution affirmed the party’s support for Diño while the other stated that should Diño decide to withdraw from the race, the party was “compelling” Duterte to run as its substitute.
Diño said he decided to withdraw his candidacy after the Comelec legal department recommended to the commission en banc to declare him a nuisance candidate. He said he felt insulted with that recommendation.
“The qualification for a candidate to run is… you must be a Filipino citizen, 10 years resident, able to read and write… The election was not made only for the rich and well-known,” said Diño.
“You see, we elected a mechanic who became President, we have a farmer in the person of President (Diosdado) Macapagal and a housewife. The Comelec is my competition, so what will happen next?” he added.
Diño denied that he filed a Certificate of Candidacy with the intention of withdrawing in Duterte’s favor.
“You know me, I have been a member of the PDP-Laban for a long time and as a VACC chairman, I am fighting for the welfare of victims of criminality. I have my advocacy,” he said.
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said Friday the poll body will study if Diño can nominate Duterte as a replacement despite an error in his COC for president, in which he wrote he was running for mayor of Pasay.
Diño dismissed this as a clerical error.
“We will study his case first… For now, his case is not clear cut. If he argued that he really intends to run for President, his case can be granted. But the problem is, he already withdrew his intent to run,” Jimenez said.
This, he added, leaves in question his and the PDP-Laban’s right to choose a substitute candidate.
A former Comelec commissioner, Gregorio Larrazabal, said if the Comelec declares Diño a nuisance candidate, the PDP-Laban would not be able to nominate anyone.
“They can substitute, but the question now is if the substitution is valid,” Larrazabal said. “If the candidate is not qualified, the person who substitutes him is also not qualified.”
He added that the Comelec law department needs to resolve Diño’s case before it can accept his decision to withdraw.