With presidential survey frontrunner Davao City Mayor Inday Sara Duterte, the presidential daughter, settling to run for vice president instead, the stage is set for a replay of the 2016 vice presidential contest between Leni Robredo and Bongbong Marcos but this time for the highest elective position of the land.

Former Congresswoman Leni beat former Senator BBM by a slight margin that dragged the subsequent electoral protest (for years) all the way up to the Supreme Court.

For the 2022 presidential race, FM Jr. (the son of his namesake former president and much reviled dictator) is leading widely in all surveys. It does not help the opposition that at least four big anti government names (Robredo, Isko Moreno, Manny Pacquiao and Ping Lacson) can not unite under one candidate to give them a better chance to win. On the President Duterte side of the contest, BBM has the support of significant numbers of DDS (Duterte Diehard Supporters) plus getting Inday Sara as his VP running mate in spite of the fact that Tatay Digong has fielded his alter ego, Senator Bong Go, to join the presidential derby. Senator Bong Go for president has adopted Inday Sara for his VP despite the situation in which she is in the BBM ticket.

Leni and FM Jr. have recently dominated mainstream media as well as the now preeminent social media (mostly Facebook) making it very difficult for the other presidential candidates to have their voices heard.

Be that as it may, the 2022 national elections are still many months away with the official campaign period to start in February, 2022 and the Presidential elections to be held in May, 2022. A lot of things can still happen. At the very least, from what has happened so far, the political exercise of the right to suffrage would be very exciting with all the twists and turns worthy of a blockbuster telenovela.