'Bakit pa kayo naniniwala?': VP Sara says Marcos broke promise to her a month into term
MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Sara Duterte said she made only two requests of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. before agreeing to run as his vice president in 2022, and that he broke one of them within a month — the earliest grievance she has yet dated in their feud.
Duterte shared this at The Hague on Monday, July 27, after Marcos delivered his fifth and penultimate State of the Nation Address.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters, Duterte dismissed the speech as worthless and told them not to believe anything the president promised in it, including arrests tied to the flood control scandal.
Duterte did not specify what the second request was but implied it required her to constantly be near her children.
"I only asked for two things. When I agreed to run, in tandem with him, as his vice president, he didn't fulfill one of my requests in just a month. It hadn't even been a year," Duterte said in Filipino.
"That was related to my request to him about what I needed to do every night for my children because my children are still young," she added.
Marcos and Duterte won the 2022 election in a landslide that fused the country's two most powerful political dynasties.
The alliance collapsed inside two years with Duterte quitting the Cabinet in June 2024. She has spent the time since accusing Marcos of persecuting her family.
Marcos said in January 2022, months before the polls, that Duterte had told him she wanted the defense portfolio, and that he liked the idea. Two days after the election, he announced her as education secretary instead.
Ignoring the SONA. Duterte told the crowd of Filipinos she did not watch the president's SONA and does not intend to read "not even a summary of it."
Her disclosure of her grievances with Marcos came after she was asked about Marcos' remarks about the flood control scandal.
Marcos had opened his address by announcing that the Ombudsman was close to filing multiple cases against former Speaker Martin Romualdez, his cousin.
"Don't expect the former speaker or members of the House of Representatives to go to jail," she said.
With Marcos breaking his campaign promise to her, Duterte added: "Sige, sabihin na natin yung personal yan eh. Pwede naman hindi tuparin yan eh. Okay, fine. Doon tayo sa 20 ang bigas. Tinupad ba hindi?"
"May makukulong before Christmas. Tinupad ba hindi? So bakit pa kayo naniniwala at nanonood ng SONA?" Duterte added.
Duterte argued Marcos' "mahiya naman kayo" line from last year's address was a public relations stunt that backfired.
What the record shows
In his address, Marcos recalled that a first wave of contractors, senior public works officials and lawmakers had already been charged and jailed.
Sen. Jinggoy Estrada was arrested in June and is detained on a non-bailable plunder charge over 573 million pesos in alleged kickbacks.
Former Sen. Bong Revilla Jr. and former Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan have also been charged.
Contractor Sarah Discaya and a regional director of the Department of Public Works and Highways are in custody awaiting trial.
Zaldy Co, the former House appropriations chair who's been charged with malversation of public funds, graft and plunder, is currently a fugitive overseas and has yet to be located by authorities.
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