DAVAO CITY—Yielding to the national gathering of supporters here that includes former generals and local chief executives, this city’s Mayor Rodrigo Duterte on late Friday night begged for “a little more time, this time to consult his family “and others’” in what was seen as a slackening of his refusal to run for the presidency.
“Please allow me a little more time, let me talk to my daughter, Inday, and my wife, and all the others,” he told a throng of people that composed supporters from Luzon, the Visayas and many areas in Mindanao who mounted a motor caravan from Cagayan de Oro City in northern Mindanao to stage a vigil to persuade him to publicly commit to run for the presidency.
Duterte, as in the past few gatherings in his so-called listening tour, laid down again a word of caution to supporters to persuade him to run.
“You know guys, if you will force me to sit down there as the President and bound by the same limitation as the other presidents have to comply, I would only end up inutile and ineffective to institute the changes that we dream,” he said.
Duterte said he would have to work beyond the limitations of the Constitution “if iI wanted to reform the system.”
“That’s the reality that you have to contend with. Otherwise, find someone else who would just sit there as the next President,” he said.
But he warned both the Bureau of Customs, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the two government insurance agencies “if ever I would become President.”
I will turn that Customs upside down, and the Government Service Insurance System to be ran like a bank,” he said.
Earlier in the week, he said the two bureaus of Customs and the Internal Revenue “should be better left privatized to increase transparency and accountability and to keep them away from the pressure of any ruling administration to produce the needed election money.”
Estimates vary of the supporters that came here, from 3,000 to as many as 10,000 to include city residents who listened to short speeches of several mayors, including a local executive from a Batangas town who said he was not afraid to be ostracized by the Liberal Party when he would be seen on television.
Also prominent in the Rizal Park stage for the vigil were former Armed Forces Chief of Staff Hermogenes Esperon, who said he left Pangasinan to join the caravan, and former National Police Chief Roberto Lastimoso and former top-ranking Moro National Liberation Front field commanders.
“We would ask you now to surrender to the people’s clamor. Whether you like it or not, it’s you who is destined for Malacañang. It is you whom people are asking to save this country,” a Luzon politician said in his speech.