MANILA, Philippines – Former Senate president Vicente “Tito” Sotto III filed his certificate of candidacy (COC) on Wednesday, October 2, seeking a comeback in the Senate where had already served for a total of 24 years.
The 76-year-old Sotto, who lost the 2022 vice presidential elections to Vice President Sara Duterte, wants to make a political comeback via the Senate after a three-year hiatus.
When Sotto campaigned against Sara Duterte in 2022, he was haunted by his support for the administration of Rodrigo Duterte and the brutal war on drugs. Sotto’s presidential running mate in 2022 was former senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, also a Senate veteran running again in the 2025 midterms.
Sotto, whose popularity was propelled by longtime noontime show Eat Bulaga which he hosts with brother Vic, was first elected to the Senate in 1992. Senators serve a six-year term, and can be reelected to another term. Sotto maximized this, serving in the upper chamber from 1992 to 2004.
He took a break after his second consecutive Senate term ended in 2004, and ran again in 2007 under the Arroyo administration’s Team Unity coalition but lost, along with nine other candidates in that Senate slate. After the one-year ban on appointing losing candidates, then-president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo picked him to chair the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) from 2008 to 2009, while he prepared for a Senate comeback.
He won in the Senate race in 2010, and again in 2016.
During the Duterte presidency, Sotto was the whip, serving as Senate majority floor leader. He ascended to become Senate president by the end of Duterte’s term, before running for vice president.
Sotto’s term in the Senate had its share of controversies, mostly due to his conservative stance on women’s reproductive rights. He opposed the Reproductive Health Law, and made an off-color remark about single mothers, calling them “na-ano” (got knocked up). Sotto had also asked Inquirer.net to remove an article that insinuated that he whitewashed the rape case of the late actress Pepsi Paloma in 1982.
The Sottos are a political dynasty. His son Gian is Quezon City vice mayor while Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto is his nephew. His daughter Lala chairs the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) where she had also made controversial censorships of Eat Bulaga’s noontime show rival, It’s Showtime, and other movies such as the documentary on a desaparecido, Alipato at Muog. – Rappler.com
