Sara Duterte was born in Davao City on May 31, 1978, the second child to lawyer Rodrigo Duterte and flight attendant Elizabeth Zimmerman. Since her youth, Duterte had a fierce and independent character, leading to a "love-hate relationship" with her father when she was a student due to her disapproval for his womanizing tendencies and late night activities. Despite this, Rodrigo considered Sara to be his favorite child, and placed high value on the education she and her brothers received. Sara Duterte attended San Pedro College, majoring in BS Respiratory Therapy, and graduated in 1999; in her inaugural speech as Mayor of Davao City, Duterte said she originally wanted to be a pediatrician instead of a politician. She later took up a law degree at the San Sebastian College – Recoletos and graduated in May 2005. In 2006, Duterte passed the Philippine Bar Examination. She is a reserved full-fledged colonel in the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Political career
City Mayor of Davao
Duterte-Carpio is Davao City's first woman mayor and the youngest to have been elected to the position in the political history of Davao City after she switched roles with her father Rodrigo Duterte from 2010-2013 as mayor and vice-mayor, respectively. Vowing to be “useful and to serve the country at all times,” Duterte, the vice-mayor in the three years prior, assumed the post that her father Rodrigo held for over 20 years. Sara won over House SpeakerProspero Nograles, her father's political rival, in a lead of 200,000 votes in the 2010 elections. Nograles earlier filed a protest at the Commission on Elections in Manila questioning the results, stating that there was a conspiracy of local poll officials. Duterte was also one of the nine elected governors of the Philippine Red Cross in 2014. In October 2015, she shaved her head to convince her father to run for President in the 2016 Philippine presidential elections, despite the latter's reticence due to lack of campaign funds and political machinery. She ran again for the mayoralty post for Davao City in the 2016 elections and won the position succeeding her father, now the current president, for the second time.
Future plans and support for her father's administration
Two years into his term, Sara Duterte's father, President Rodrigo Duterte, announced that he wants his daughter to succeed him. The Dutertes are known to support political dynasties in the Philippines, when they aggressively gathered support against the Anti-Political Dynasty Bill during 2015, stating that their nearly four decades of uncontested rule in Davao as a product of "democratic" process. They also accused and blame various politicians of being political dynasties. About two months after her father's proclamation of Sara Duterte as his "successor", Sara Duterte launched a movement that gathers support from Duterte's political allies, supporters and friends and called it "Tapang at Malasakit". Sara Duterte denies that it has anything to do with any campaign or position, but pundits state that it was part of her plans to gain political traction for future campaigns and an attempt to rally political allies against Senator Antonio Trillanes' "Tindig Pilipinas", a movement which actively pushes for investigation into Duterte's alleged corruption, hidden wealth, and involvement in extrajudicial killings and a stop to all of Duterte's lies. Such movement did not gain any traction since it was established. On October 18, 2018, after having alternated for two decades in the mayor's and vice-mayor office of Davao with her father and her brother Paolo, she resubmitted her candidacy to the mayor's office of Davao and backs in his candidacy to vice-mayor to her younger brother Sebastian. Appears with them her older brother Paolo, and who now returns to political life by presenting his candidacy to Congress. Paolo's wife is also running in the municipal elections. She said in interview that she does not intend to withdraw her COC as city mayor and request for a substitution to run for a national post, similar to what President Rodrigo Duterte did before in the 2016 presidential elections. However, many political commentators are talking about her preparations to run for the Senate and even see her as the future president of the Philippines.
Personal life
Duterte has been married since October 27, 2007 to her fellow lawyer Manases "Mans" R. Carpio, whom she met while she was attending San Beda University. They have two children: an adopted daughter, Mikhaila María, nicknamed "Sharky", and a son, Mateo Lucas, nicknamed "Stingray". Manases, a nephew of OmbudsmanConchita Carpio-Morales and Supreme Court Senior Associate JusticeAntonio Carpio, is a legal counsel for Lapanday Foods Corp. On April 18, 2016, in connection with the rape remark made by her father Rodrigo on one of his presidential candidacy campaigns, Duterte took to her Instagram account to admit that she was once a rape victim. However, Rodrigo Duterte dismissed his daughter's admission and referred to her as a "drama queen". In August 2018, her father remarked about the high statistics of rape cases in Davao, joking that there are "many beautiful women" in Davao, which explains the high rate. Sara responded by defending her father, asking the critics what good they have done for Davao, compared to her family's governance.
