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As Sara Duterte backs Imee Marcos, will it sway Philippine Senate elections?
A last-minute political gamble sees the president’s sister seeking to revive her campaign by tapping into the vice-president’s popularity
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Philippine Senator Imee Marcos has broken publicly with her brother, President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, in a striking political ad released ahead of next month’s Senate election. The move, analysts say, is aimed at reviving her flagging re-election campaign by tapping the enduring popularity of former president Rodrigo Duterte and his family.
The 31-second ad, aired on Monday, features Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio – daughter of the former president and one of the president’s chief political rivals – endorsing Imee’s re-election bid for the first time.
In the ad titled ITIM – the Filipino word for black and an acronym for “Inday Trusts Imee Marcos” – both women are dressed in black, which Duterte-Carpio says is now “the colour of the nation while mourning over hunger and criminality”.
Duterte-Carpio is popularly known as “Inday”, a Visayan term of endearment often used in central and southern Philippines, where her family has deep roots.
“Starving for food and for justice. Oppressing non-allies,” Imee adds, in a clear rebuke of her brother’s administration – particularly its treatment of Duterte, who was extradited to The Hague last month to face charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.
The ad was aired just a month before the May 12 elections and nearly five months after the vice-president said that she had hired an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the speaker of the house in the event she was murdered.
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