In the midst of socio-political turmoil that the Philippines is experiencing today, down south is a picture of calm, a prevailing aura of confidence and trust. There is a surge of muti-billion pesos in investments from domestic and local entrepreneurs that is changing the landscape of Davao City.
The unimpeded progressive development of Davao metropolis is a contradiction to what verbose politicians and their phalanx of anti-Duterte propagandists wanted to picture the country will be under the leadership of another Duterte…meaning Vice President Sara Duterte.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros had long been suffering from an unexplainable Duterte phobia. Leila de Lima had been spreading lies about the mythical Davao Death Squad and the alleged extra-judicial killings of some 2,000 plus victims. Back in 2009 , as Chair of the Commission on Human Rights, she claimed that the EJK victims were buried in a common grave in an abandoned quarry. She and her probe team practically camped in a downtown hotel for months, spending millions of pesos in search for evidence and interrogating people, digging what she claimed were burial grounds, but found nothing. She cautioned recently that killings will return under Sara’s Presidency.
And there is the putschist Antonio Trillanes who promised to leave the country if VP Sara becomes President saying the Philippines will be damaged under her leadership.
But who is actually Inday Sara Z. Duterte as a leader compared to the three stooges and their ilks? Factor in France Castro and the rest of the ACT Teachers Party-list representatives and other left-leaning politicians who abhor the Dutertes, particularly Inday Sara, like plague.
Since the focus of her political adversaries is VP Sara let us delve on her. The VP, like her siblings and her father is raised under strict standard of discipline. She was elected Vice Mayor and honed to the kind of leadership of his father who was the longest serving Mayor of Davao City and later became President, the first from Mindanao.
Inday Sara was elected Mayor of Davao City in 2010 beating the former Speaker Prospero Nograles by a wide margin of votes.
Sara, a lawyer, is a stickler of law, intelligent and courageous and surprisingly has business sense and forward looking in terms of planning and development. Under her term Davao City achieved a remarkable economic growth of almost 9 percent dwarfing the national average.
She pursued the cleanliness program of the city under her father but radically improved on it by directing the power and cable firms to transfer the unsightly cobwebs of wires and cables underground.
She conceptualized the Davao Public Transport Modernization Project (DPTMP) a first-of-its-kind in the Philippines. Now partly operational it covers 29 routes spanning 672 kilometers, seamlessly linking key areas within Davao City up to the adjacent Panabo City in Davao del Norte. The network is designed to serve up to 800,000 passengers daily.
DPTMP is to replace the rickety jeeps we call “multi-cabs” that serve as public transport not only in Davao City but other places in Mindanao. These units were actually smuggled vehicles salvaged from the junkyard in Japan. They enter the customs ports disassembled and later reassembled and converted into left -hand drive. Both the LTFRB and the LTO knew these were originally smuggled but both agencies register them anyway and issued franchise to operate.
When Sara assumed as Mayor she decided to introduce the new bus transport system in the city, A project study was made which later was endorsed by the National Economic Development Authority for funding. When she was elected Vice President the project had the green light from the Office of the President with Marcos signing a loan agreement with Asian Development Bank. It became a joint project by the National Government and Davao City, Then DOTR Sec. Vince Dizon made an announcement that the Marcos government owns the project. Oh well they can get the credit provided Davao City gets the services of a modern bus system. Everything seemed rosy but this was however halted and apparently scrapped when the she calls it quits with the Marcos administration.
But the plan has to be realized. Her brother Sebastian Duterte, the acting Mayor of Davao City pursued the plan with the City Government providing the funds from its own coffers. In 2025, the City Government of Davao purchased 10 units of Yutong electric buses to serve the routes. These are low-entry buses have features such as GPS, CCTVs, TV screen, and bicycle racks. Each unit costs ₱9.9 million, funded through the City’s Supplemental Budget No. 3, FY 2024.[32] Today the initial 10 units of modern Yutong brand buses are plying some routes in the city.
The private transport sector has gone with the trend. Early this month 500 units of environment-friendly electric “green” taxis procured from Vietnam arrived.
At one time in her feat of hatred against Sara Duterte, Sen. Risa Hontiveros expressed aghast why Davao City spends a huge amount of Confidential and Intelligence funds asserting that Makati City spends much less when it is bigger than the city of Davao. No one from the city officialdom reacted to her diatribe. Obviously they allowed the ignorance of the senator to speak for itself.
Anyway, the city government invest substantially on peace and order program. Davao City is more than three times larger than Metro Manila so that makes Makati just about the size of a city barangay. Under the City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte 911 Emergency and Response System was established. It was the first in the Philippines and the third in the world. Part of the CIF budget of the city is allocated to the Davao City Police Office. DCPO had been recipient of police cars and motorcycles. The city intelligence division has its own network of tripping points all over the city which monitors movements of suspicious characters.
All these have resulted in Davao City being named as the second most peaceful place in Southeast Asia and are the reasons why it has been declared as the Philippines best tourism destination.
The economic growth of Davao City has resulted in traffic congestion with the influx of migrants in search of peaceful leaving and job opportunities. These problem has been properly addressed. The coastal boulevard and bridges are nearing completion even then as it has been partially opened. Another bypass highway that passes through a tunnel (the longest in the country) is also undergoing finishing touches. There are two major overpasses that are in the works although I will not count on these yet as DPWH wanted these to be monuments of their incompetence.
Davao City too is home to Davao City Water District which supplies one of the few best-quality of potable water in the world. DCWD and the City Watershed Management Office have an enviable program of conserving and protecting the city’s protected watershed areas which served as recharge areas for its vital aquifers and rivers. They do these in partnership with the tribal communities which in turn receive various assistance, opportunities, educational scholarships, redirection of agriculture system and practices as part of watershed management which have led to a more productive endeavors.
I can go further in the list of best practices, planning and good governance of Davao City but this is enough to show and prove that the city’s progress and development mirrors the quality of leadership. Now let’s proceed by asking the question: Does any of the critics of VP Sara have any credentials to prove that together they can be any better than the Duterte brand of leadership?
