Filemon sotto 1872 presidential election

Without attending a single rally or officially declaring his interest for the vice presidency, Senate President Vicente Castelo “Tito” Sotto III has beaten President Rodrigo Roa Duterte as the frontrunner for vice president in surveys by respected polling firms.

In June 2021, Duterte was the runaway choice for vice president.   One of every five voters wanted him as their vice president in May 2022. Sotto languished in third place, with only one of every ten voters voting for him for the second highest position of the land.

Then in August 2021, the Senate conducted hearings into a P42 billion chunk of the 2020 budget of the Department of the Health transferred to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). 

A third of the money, or P12 billion, was allotted as payments to Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp., an unknown company with very little capital (P625,000 when incorporated in September 2019). 

Nondescript, Pharmally is without a decent office (just an email address), without adequate personnel (most of whom cannot be located), without a product, without warehouses, without delivery vehicles, without a financial track record.  Under a Philippine law, such companies normally cannot get government supply contracts. 

Senate Blue Ribbon discovers Duterte crony

The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee discovered that Pharmally had a very powerful backer and financier, a Chinese national named Michael Yang, a resigned economic adviser to President Duterte and a long-time resident of his Davao City. Duterte and Yang had been friends since 1999. Yang became his economic adviser in 2018. 

The connection gave rise to speculation Duterte has maintained all these years a Davao Mafia that was cornering choice government contracts and to a growing outrage against high-level corruption in the government.

People outraged

The outrage was swift and unforgiving. In Pulse Asia’s September 2021 survey, Duterte’s daughter, Mayor

Filipino politician

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Sotto and the second or maternal family name is Yapsutco.

Filemón Sotto (Tagalog pronunciation:[ˈsɔtɔ]; November 22, 1872 – October 10, 1966) was a Filipino lawyer, legislator, and politician from Cebu, Philippines. He was a newspaper publisher and founded the periodicals El Imperial, Ang Kaluwasan, La Opinion, and La Revolucion. He served as member of Cebu municipal board, congressman of Cebu's 3rd district for the Philippine Assembly (1907–1916), senator of the Philippine Legislature (1916–1922), delegate to the 1934 Constitutional Convention, and delegate to the Institute of National Language (1937).

Early life

Filemon Yap Sotto was born in Cebu, Philippines on November 22, 1872. The son of Marcelino Antonio Sotto y Legaspi of Binondo, Manila and Pascuala Yap y Sutco of Binondo, Manila, he was the elder

Filipino politician and entertainer (born 1948)

In this Philippine name, the middle name or maternal family name is Castelo and the surname or paternal family name is Sotto.