Manila's popular mayor declares bid for Philippine presidency

Manila's youthful mayor with a compelling rags-to-riches story yesterday officially announced that he will run for president next year, giving the opposition a candidate who can mount a credible challenge to President Rodrigo Duterte's bid to continue to rule through proxies.

Mr Isko Moreno, 46, is the second most popular candidate for the country's top political office, after Ms Sara Duterte, 43, Mr Duterte's eldest daughter and the mayor of Davao city, who has been coy about her intentions.

"It's not high ambition that led to this decision. It's the desperate, miserable condition we now find ourselves in," Mr Moreno told a gathering of his supporters.

He said he was running for president to undo what he saw as the Duterte administration's poor response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"We've been quarantining for 557 days, but instead of flattening the curve we have flattened the economy," he said.

The Philippines is South-east Asia's second-worst hit country, with over 2.4 million Covid-19 cases and more than 37,000 deaths.

The Health Ministry has been registering some 20,000 cases a day in recent weeks, as the government tries to contain the spread of the extremely infectious Delta variant with a mix of quarantine curbs and hard, targeted lockdowns.

Mr Moreno, who grew up dirt poor in a rough district with a murder rate of one a day, leaned on his past to establish his credentials.

"If you're born on the wrong side of the city, at the bottom of the city, you can't escape profiling in life… It's not just food you're trying to dig out of rubbish bins. You're also always begging for respect," he said.

He was born and raised in Tondo, Manila's largest but poorest district known for its slums and hardscrabble neighbourhoods.

As a child, Mr Moreno scavenged for scraps in landfills and collected old newspapers to help his family make ends meet. He also foraged for leftovers from eateries.

A talent scout spotted him during a wake in 1993. He was 18 then and his good looks stood out from among his usually scraggy peers. He later appeared in a popular variety show, moving on to TV dramas and movies.

While working as an actor, and still a youthful 23, he was elected to the Manila City Council.

He served as deputy to Mayor Alfredo Lim and then Mayor Joseph Estrada, who went on to become president, from 2007 to 2016.

He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 but three years later won Manila's mayoral election.

Mr Moreno has drawn praise as mayor of the country's sprawling capital, and his response to the pandemic has made him very popular among those living in Manila.

He has overseen a massive vaccine roll-out, and cash and food dole-outs for poor households in the city. He has had field hospitals and isolation centres built, and has lately been criticising the government for prioritising purchases of face shields instead of drugs desperately needed by Covid-19 patients on life support.

Mr Moreno joins boxing icon Manny Pacquiao, 42, and Senator Panfilo Lacson, 73, who gained prominence when he served as Mr Estrada's chief anti-crime enforcer, in announcing their candidacy for the presidency.

Ms Duterte has been consistently topping opinion polls, but she recently said that she will be running for re-election as Davao mayor instead. Political analysts say she might still make a last-minute bid for the presidency, as her father did in 2015.

Mr Duterte himself is running for vice-president, in what critics say is a bid to avoid prosecution for his bloody drug war and allegations of massive corruption in his government. The Constitution limits the president to just one six-year term.