DAVAO City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, a presidential candidate, said Thursday he is ready to face his opponents to discuss issues and present his platform of government during the debates to be conducted by the Commission on Elections.
Duterte made the statement during a Go Negosyo: Meet the Presidentiables forum at the Fairmont Hotel in Makati City a day after the Comelec dismissed the four disqualification cases filed against him.
“I am now an official [presidential] candidate and I am ready to face them in debates,” Duterte told the businessmen and small and medium entrepreneurs who attended the event.
He made his statement even as the spokesman for the PDP-Laban, Duterte’s political party, said more people were now considering Duterte as a “more serious candidate” unlike the Liberal Party’s standard bearer Manuel Roxas II.
“Mayor Duterte is considered by the people as a more serious candidate than Mar Roxas,” Paola Alvarez said.
“The people deserve more than candidates who promise only continuity and not bold solutions, who promise more of the same when clearly it is no longer enough.”
Duterte recently said he would not attend the presidential debates unless the Comelec declared him an official candidate.
At the same forum on Thursday, Duterte said he was also willing to accept campaign contributions provided the money came from legitimate sources and from people who had no business connections with the government.
The Comelec had signed an agreement with private media entities and other public affairs networks to collaborate in holding presidential debates dubbed “Pilipinas Debates 2016”.
The first debate has been scheduled on Feb. 21 in Cagayan de Oro City.
Comelec chairman Andres Bautista said there will be three presidential debates: one each in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao while the lone vice presidential debate will be held in Metro Manila.
He said the Visayas leg of the debates will be held in Cebu on March 20, and the Luzon leg on April 24 in Central Luzon or Southern Luzon.
The vice presidential debate has been scheduled on March 10 in a place in Metro Manila that is yet to be announced.
Under the Fair Election Act, the Comelec may require national television and radio networks to sponsor at least three national debates among the presidential candidates and at least one national debate among the vice presidential candidates during the campaign period.
This year will mark the first time that the Comelec will be holding a series of national debates since the 1992 presidential elections.
The Comelec said the debates aim to help voters make an informed choice.
Meanwhile, Duterte promised that after the elections on May 9 he would visit the Vatican to ask forgiveness from Pope Francis for badmouthing the leader of the Catholic Church in a speech in Manila late last year.
“I already made an apology to the Pope. For now, I don’t want to go there [the Vatican] to avoid speculation that I am just doing it to get votes,” Duterte said.