Sara won’t resign as Vice President , DepEd chief

MANILA, Philippines —  Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte will not resign from her posts, dispelling confusion over her supposed plan to run in the 2025 elections.

“I did not say anything like that in my speech. That is why whenever someone asks, I say that whatever I laid down in my speech is clear. I believe since the interpretation is line per line and not the speech as a whole, there tend to be questions,” Duterte told reporters yesterday.

She said parts of her speech were misconstrued by some people, which caused confusion regarding her political plans.

Duterte announced her intention to run in “the next elections,” while also saying that her brothers, Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte and Davao City 1st District Rep. Paolo Duterte, are no longer running for office in 2025.

She was quoted in Cebuano as saying that she is “campaigning for the next elections,” even as her term as vice president ends in 2028.

The Vice President reiterated that everything about running for office was laid down in her speech in Barangay Bago Gallera in Davao City, and that the confusion was because of the “piecemeal appreciation” of the people in what she was saying.

“It means, they remove one line to get the interpretation that they want,” she said.

Duterte did not comment on President Marcos’ statement that she could have been testing the waters.

“President Marcos and I haven’t talked about the next elections,” the Vice President said. “The UniTeam is our tandem when we ran for president and vice president in the last elections, that’s it. Now, the two of us, we were elected as President and Vice President, we both do our jobs for our country.”

Duterte said her political plans do not involve her apparent rift with Speaker Martin Romualdez.

“I cannot speculate what the Speaker is thinking. I don’t know him that well. Our friendship is not that deep for me to be able to speculate,” the Vice President said.

She added that she has not received any document from the International Criminal Court.

Meanwhile, the budget for the mental health and school-based feeding programs of the Department of Education (DepEd) has more than doubled this year, as Duterte