Sara Duterte backs Kiko Pangilinan’s brother-in-law in Pasay race

Davao city Mayor Sara Duterte has picked Chet Cuneta as her bet for the mayoralty of Pasay City.

While he is supported by Sara's administration slate Hugpong ng Pagbabago, Chet is the brother-in-law of Senator Francis Pangilinan, the campaign manager of the opposition's Otso Diretso senatorial ticket.

Pangilinan's wife Sharon Cuneta is the sister of the Duterte-backed mayoral bet.

“HNP does not endorse local candidates dahil we are a regional political party, pero meron kaming mga local partners tulad ni Mayor Chet Cuneta… Partner namin siya kasi he helped President Duterte noong 2016,” Sara said.

“Nakita namin… Nagkatrabaho kami nung 2016 during the campaign and nakita namin ‘yung kanyang ginawa for President Duterte, not just in Pasay but in Metro Manila,” she added.

Based on Comelec records, Metro Manila had at least six million voters in the 2016 polls.

Then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte led the second-placed candidate Mar Roxas by over six million votes.

Both Chet and his rival—Pasay City Representative Emi Calixto-Rubiano—in November 2018 both claimed that they had secured Sara’s backing for the 2019 polls.

Rubiano first posted a photo of Sara raising her hand on her Facebook account.

Sharon then posted a photo of Sara raising Chet’s hand in Sharon’s Instagram account.

Not to be outdone, Rubiano posted a photo of her hand being raised by no less than President Duterte.

Sara, however, has been very vocal of her admiration for Sharon, telling the audience during campaign stops that her first cassette tape was the album of Sharon who started her career as a singer before being an actress.

Sara said that she was a die-hard fan of Sharon and that she would always want to have her picture taken with the singer-actress.

While Duterte has said that Pangilinan was a friend, the LP president had been at the receiving end of the President's criticisms for authoring the law that set the minimum age of criminal liability to 15 years old.

Congress has since lowered the age of "social responsibility" to 12. —NB, GMA News