President Rodrigo R. Duterte on Tuesday night said he would retire from politics when his six-year term ends next year.
The tough-talking leader, who is barred by law from running for reelection, told SMNI Channel he would spend his life as a private citizen in his hometown of Davao City, where he served as a mayor and prosecutor for years.
Mr. Duterte, 76, also claimed to have told his daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, not to “commit the mistake of running for the presidency.”
“Do not ever, ever commit the mistake of running for presidency,” he said, adding that she would not get anything back.
The ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino–Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) earlier passed a resolution urging Mr. Duterte, the chairman, to run for vice president. It also allowed him to choose his own running mate.
His spokesman Herminio L. Roque on Tuesday said the President would consider the advice of his allies about his political career.
Senator Emmanuel D. Pacquiao and Taguig Rep. Alan Peter S. Cayetano had discouraged him from running for vice president next year.
The boxing champion earlier urged the supporters of Mr. Duterte and Ms. Carpio, who is being urged to run for president, to “give others a chance.”
Mr. Cayetano, Mr. Duterte’s running mate in 2016, said it is better for the President to become an “elder statesman.”
Political analysts and constitutional experts have said the push for a Duterte vice presidency violates the spirit of the 1987 Constitution.
The late President Corazon C. Aquino oversaw the drafting of the basic law that limited the powers of the presidency and re-established the bicameral Congress, which her predecessor, the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr. abolished.
Mr. Marcos and his family were forced into exile in the US after he was ousted by a popular street uprising in 1986.
Michael Henry Ll. Yusingco, a senior research fellow at the Ateneo de Manila University Policy Center, said the push for Mr. Duterte to run for vice president is more a party issue than a personal one.
“I see certain elements in the party probably feeling anxious of a possible Sara Duterte presidency given that she is not actually a member of the party,” he said in a Facebook Messenger chat.