MANILA – Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque on Thursday said President Rodrigo Duterte might pursue his plan to step down if former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. wins his election case against Vice President Leni Robredo.
“If he becomes vice president, perhaps the President will make true his word that he will step down,” Roque said in a Palace press briefing.
Roque said the President thinks Marcos “is one of the better qualified persons to succeed”.
“If there are developments and he wins the protest and he becomes vice president, yes, he (the President) will make true his word,” he said.
The President said he is hesitant to suggest constitutional succession, saying Vice President Leni Robredo cannot even “improve on anything here”.
“What he is worried about is, if we were to use constitutional succession, then the successor may not be qualified. And then he expressed a preference on who he thinks will be qualified,” Roque said.
Duterte also mentioned Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero as another qualified person to replace him.
Both Marcos and Escudero ran for vice president in the 2016 elections but Robredo won by a slim margin of 263,743 votes over Marcos.
Marcos, son of former president Ferdinand Marcos, filed an electoral protest before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET). (PNA)
