New City Council Member

The City Council will resume its session today, the first for 2008, with a new member.

Catalunan Grande Barangay Captain Paolo Duterte, eldest son of the Mayor Rody Duterte and brother of Vice Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, will debut today.

Paolo won in last October’s barangay polls and elected unanimously to lead the Association of Barangay Captains last December 29. The ABC head is an ex-officio member of the local legislative body.

When I served as Executive Assistant of Mayor Duterte at City Hall during the 1990s, I sort of helped prepare Paolo for a potential political career. We helped him set up the Barog youth arm of the Duterte administration. Plans to field him for the City Council, however, was sidetracked by an early marriage. In the meantime, her younger sister, Sara, has become a lawyer and prime for a political post, and has overtaken him.

Paolo would be the 4th Duterte to become a member of the City Council after his father who served as OIC Vice Mayor after EDSA 1, his uncle Benjamin “Bong”who served in 1998-2001, and sister Sara who started to preside at the City Council last year.

His grandfather, Vicente Duterte, served as the last Governor of the undivided Davao Province during the late 1950s up to 1967.

(4:51 a.m.)