By ANTONIO L. COLINA IV
DAVAO CITY – Davao City mayor Sara Duterte lashed out at opposition Senator Antonio Trillanes IV on Wednesday for claiming that her father, President Rodrigo R. Duterte, is grooming her to take over the presidency in 2022.
“Leave me alone, Senator Trillanes. The last time a person irked me, I made sure to make it difficult for him to bring me down and Speaker Boy Nograles lost that election and was a billion pesos poorer,” the mayor posted on Facebook.
Mayor Sara, who was vice mayor of Davao from 2007 to 2010, won against former Speaker Nograles in the 2010 mayoralty elections with her father as vice mayor. A lawyer by profession, she returned to private practice when her father ran for mayor while her brother, Paolo, aimed at and won the vice mayoralty race in 2013.
Mayor Sara made a comeback as Duterte ran for president in 2016.
In a report on GMA news online on June 12, Trillanes, a staunch critic of the administration, said the President’s last option to perpetuate himself in power is to have his daughter run for senator next year and then for president as he steps down by 2022.
But the mayor told the senator: “Like Speaker Alvarez, my advice to you is not to think of me, speak of my name, not even a whisper of Inday Sara from your ugly lips. Leave me in peace in Davao City or else you and your friends will spend more than a billion in the 2022 Presidential elections just to make me insignificant.”
She added that to never bother her again and her slot will be available for a “yellow” Senator for the 2019 elections.
“President Duterte imagines you will be shot, on the other hand, I will make sure you are alive and in pain. I have been described as heartless by my mother, please do not anger me so that you may remain relevant for the future generation. And you should listen to my mother,” she added.
During the launch of a regional political party, Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP), on Feb. 23, the mayor said she has yet to decide whether she would run for reelection as local chief executive or run for the Lower House in next year’s midterm elections.
The feisty mayor was also at loggerheads with Speaker Alvarez, claiming that the latter accused her of being in the opposition for leading the new political party, composed of governors and mayors of the different provinces, cities, and municipalities of the Davao Region.
