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Rodrigo Duterte regained the mayorship of Davao city with a landslide vote despite being detained.
Duterte’s daughter, Sara, is coordinating efforts for him to assume office from The Hague.
The Philippine mid-term election was marked by a feud between President Ferdinand Marcos and Sara Duterte.
Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, detained at the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity, regained the mayorship of family stronghold Davao city in a landslide vote on Monday, an initial tally showed.
With over 77% of returns in, Duterte had built an insurmountable lead of 635,948 votes toabout 78,000 for his nearest competitor, results from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) released by local media showed.
But what role, if any, Duterte will play in governing the city of nearly 1.8 million from his cell in the Netherlands is unclear.
His daughter, impeached vice president Sara Duterte, told reporters after casting her vote earlier in the day that plans were already under way to ensure he would officially become mayor.
Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, detained at the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity, regained the mayorship of family stronghold Davao city in a landslide vote on May 12, 2025, an initial tally showed (file photo). Photo / AFP
“His ICC lawyers and his Filipino lawyers are discussing how to have him take his oath of office as winner of the mayoral contest here in Davao city,” she said, noting they had until June 30.
Duterte, 80, was arrested at Manila’s international airport on March 11 and flown to The Hague the same day to face charges tied to his crackdown on drugs that killed thousands of mostly poor men.
His communication since has come sporadically and through surrogates, mainly Sara.
“I don’t think he will ever be able to assume the office if he’s still in The Hague,” said Michael Henry Yusingco, a senior research fellow at the Ateneo School of Government, said on Monday.
There is precedent for governing from a prison cell in the Philippines, with former senator Leila de Lima — jailed by Duterte on what rights groups say were trumped-up drug charges — a prime example.
During six years behind bars, de Lima still consulted regularly with allies and even cast votes via proxies.
Duterte’s ability to remotely call the shots in Davao, however, may be more compromised given the distance and potential Hague restrictions on communication, Yusingco said.
“If you cannot [be at City Hall] because of your circumstances, then I think it only logically follows that you have to be treated as incapacitated for the moment, and therefore the vice mayor will take over,” he said.
Duterte’s youngest son Sebastian, who stepped aside for his father after serving as Davao’s mayor for the past three years, looked set to claim the city’s vice mayorship on Monday.
But while residents of Davao have a level of familiarity with the 37-year-old Sebastian, his father cannot be so easily replaced, Yusingco said.
“The Duterte magic solely belongs to him... it’s not transferable to his children,” he said.
Explosive feud between Marcos, Sara Duterte
Millions of Filipinos braved long lines and soaring temperatures on Monday to vote in a mid-term election largely defined by the explosive feud between Marcos and Sara Duterte.
With 75% of precincts reporting, Senate candidates aligned with Duterte were on track to claim five of 12 seats up for grabs, an initial tally from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) released by local media showed.
The tally, if it holds, would give the vice president one more seat than predicted in nationwide polls — a potentially crucial vote in a looming Senate impeachment trial tentatively scheduled for July.
Five Senate hopefuls endorsed by Marcos and two independents appeared headed for election as the clock approached midnight.
Monday’s election will also decide more than 18,000 positions nationally, from seats in the House of Representatives to hotly contested municipal offices.
With temperatures reaching 34C in some places during the day, Comelec chief George Garcia said some voting machines had experienced “overheating”.
Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte arrives to vote in the mid-term election at a polling station in Davao City. Photo / Handout / Office of the Vice-President of the Philippines / AFP
“It’s slowing the voting process,” he told reporters at a prison in southern Manila where inmates were casting ballots.
“Due to the extreme heat, the ink [on the ballots] does not dry immediately, and the ballot ends up stuck on the scanners,” Garcia said, adding officials in some areas were resorting to aiming electric fans at the machines.
The heat had even turned the blue ink used to dye voters’ fingers orange in the bottle, he said.
Roland Agasa, one of the country’s 68 million registered voters, said the feud between the Duterte and Marcos dynasties had taken a mental toll ahead of the election.
“The government is getting stressful,” the 53-year-old said outside a Manila elementary school where a polling station was on the fourth and fifth floors.
“I hope we choose the deserving, those who can help the country.” He planned to wait until the day cooled before braving the stairs to vote.
Numbers game
Monday’s Senate battle holds major implications for the presidential election in 2028.
The 12 senators elected nationally will form half the jury in Duterte’s impeachment trial, with a guilty verdict permanently barring her from public office.
The vice president needs nine votes in the 24-seat Senate to preserve any hope of a future presidential run.
Two candidates tracking to win, including the president’s independent-minded sister Imee Marcos, were “adopted” as honorary members of the Duterte family’s PDP-Laban party on Saturday.
People pose with their inked fingres after voting in the mid-term election at a polling station set up in a mall in Manila on May 12, 2025. Photo / AFP
The move to add Marcos and television personality Camille Villar to the party’s slate was intended to add “more allies to protect the Vice President against impeachment”, according to a party resolution.
Duterte’s long-running feud with former ally Marcos erupted in February when she was impeached by the House for alleged “high crimes”, including corruption and an assassination plot against the president.
Barely a month later, her father was arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to face a charge of crimes against humanity over his deadly drug crackdown.
Election violence
As polls opened on Monday, two men were killed and seven wounded in the central Philippines when men fired on a group outside a local party headquarters from a moving vehicle.
The Philippines has a long history of election violence, with armed groups of political rivals routinely fighting over positions that control local government spending.
A day before, at least two people were killed in a clash between supporters of rival political camps in southern Mindanao island’s autonomous Muslim region, the Philippine army reported.
National police have been on alert for more than a week, and around 163,000 officers have been deployed to secure polling stations, escort election officials and guard checkpoints.
Comelec last week said it had recorded 81 acts of “politically related” violence between January 12 and May 7. Police told AFP that 16 of those had resulted in death.
