VICE presidential aspirant Sara Duterte-Carpio has affirmed full support for former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., squelching doubts about the wisdom of her decision to slide down to a VP run despite her enormous popularity, and asked her supporters to protect him.
In a swing through key southern areas at the weekend, the Davao City mayor also asked her supporters to protect as well their unifying tandem, the BBM-Sara Uniteam.
At the ceremonial kickoff of the BBM-Sara Uniteam nationwide synchronized unity ride in Tagum City, Duterte-Carpio said, “there are times when we find ourselves to be the leader, but sometimes in our lives we need to stand behind another leader.”
She said she is confident that Marcos’s enormous experience in local governance and national legislation will help him carry out his job as president.
“Why did I choose Bongbong Marcos to be my partner? First, he is a former governor, and his experience as governor, like me, as local chief executive, is beyond debate. Second, he also has experience in the House of Representatives, he was a congressman and later senator. You voted for him there, so I believe that experience will help him do his job as president of the Philippines,” she said, partly in Filipino.
“What can you do? What can all of us do? We must show we are not just showing support but we will make sure to guard our cherished dreams. Let’s protect our candidate, let’s protect BBM,” Sara told the crowd.
Speaking on the same occasion, Marcos Jr. said that the “BBM-Sara Uniteam nationwide synchronized caravan was a positively-charged, voluntary mass action for national unity, peace and prosperity.”
“The Filipino has triumphed over war, storms, calamities and all sorts of crisis because of unity,” he said, adding that the country will overcome the pandemic through unity, which is inherent in the Filipino.
Aside from Davao City, Tagum City, and Davao del Norte, millions of BBM-Sara Uniteam supporters from 15 provinces and 30 cities from Abra, Northern Luzon, Bicol Region, Calabarzon, Visayas, and Metro Manila joined the simultaneous “unity ride.”
A statement from their Uniteam camp noted that Bongbong and Sara continue to lead in all formal (methodological) and “random, real-time man on the street” presidential and vice presidential preferential surveys.