Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte-Carpio was on born May 31, 1978), commonly known as Inday Sara. She is the second child to then-lawyer later president Rodrigo Duterte and flight attendant Elizabeth Zimmerman. Her great-grandfather was German American, having fled to the Philippines from the United States.
She is a Filipino lawyer and politician who is the 15th and current vice president of the Philippines. The youngest vice president in Philippine history. A daughter of the 16th president Rodrigo Duterte, she previously served as the mayor of Davao City from 2016 to 2022, and from 2010 to 2013. She was also Davao City's vice mayor from 2007 to 2010.
Sara considered her relationship with her father as "not very close". Despite this, Rodrigo considered Sara to be his favorite child, and placed high value on the education she and her brothers received.
S. Duterte graduated from San Pedro College, initially aiming to pursue a medical career. She attended classes in the College of Law of San Beda College and eventually graduated in San Sebastian College – Recoletos. She was elected as Davao City's vice mayor in 2007, before eventually being elected as the city's mayor from 2010 until 2013, succeeding her father and becoming the youngest and the first female mayor of the city. After her first term ended, she took a brief hiatus, returning to politics in 2016 after being elected again as Davao City mayor and was reelected in 2019.
During her second stint as mayor, she initiated the Byaheng DO30 and Peace 911 programs in the city, as well as overseeing the city government's COVID-19 pandemic response. Duterte was also an influential figure in national politics during her father's presidency, forming alliances with several political parties and playing a key role in the ouster of Pantaleon Alvarez as the Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2018.
Duterte ran for the vice presidency in 2022 under Lakas–CMD, becoming the running mate of Bongbong Marcos from the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas under the UniTeam alliance. Their ticket won in a landslide victory, becoming the first running mate pair to win together since 2004, and the first to be elected by a majority since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1986. Duterte became the vice president on June 30, 2022, and was inaugurated 11 days earlier in Davao City.
As vice president, Duterte concurrently served as the secretary of education and as vice chairperson of an anti-insurgency task force (NTF-ELCAC) but resigned from both positions on June 19, 2024. Despite her initial electoral alliance with Marcos, political observers have noted her increasing absence from public appearances with the president correlating with a growing rift in the Marcos and Duterte political families. By late August 2024, she has openly admitted her regret to supporting Marcos in the presidential election, while Marcos himself later acknowledged that they have not spoken to each other since she handed in her resignation. After her father was arrested and brought to The Hague in March 2025, her tenure has been characterized by multiple trips abroad that aim to consolidate her family's overseas supporters.
On February 5, 2025, Duterte was impeached by the House of Representatives after concerns were raised regarding her use of confidential funds and her assassination threat against President Marcos, his wife Liza and House Speaker Martin Romualdez. She became the first sitting vice president, as well as the fifth official in Philippine history, to be impeached.
On December 2, 2010, President Benigno Aquino III appointed her as Chairperson of the Regional Development Council (RDC) Region XI. She was the first woman to hold the position and the first to be appointed from the government sector since the reorganization of the council in 1986. As chairperson, she saw the growth of Davao Region’s Gross Regional Domestic Product from 3.9 percent in 2011 to 7.1 percent in 2012.
On July 1, 2011, Duterte gained national attention when she punched Abe Andres, a Davao City Regional Trial Court sheriff, over the demolition of shanties in Barangay Kapitan Tomas Monteverde Sr., Agdao, Davao City. She had earlier asked the court and the demolition team to delay the demolition. But Andres refused her request and pushed through with the violent demolition which made her furious. On July 11, Sheriffs Confederation of the Philippines Inc. filed a complaint against Duterte in connection to the incident. On June 28, 2012, almost a year after the incident, she publicly apologized to Andres and his family. By May 2022, Andres openly expressed his support for the Marcos-Duterte electoral team.
In her first day as the vice president, Duterte established satellite offices for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) in Cebu City, Dagupan, Davao City, Tacloban, Tandag, and Zamboanga City. The seat of the Office of the Vice President would then be transferred from Quezon City Reception House to Cybergate Plaza in Mandaluyong, which is closer to the headquarters of the Department of Education (DepEd) in Pasig where she also held office as its secretary.
On August 3, 2022, Duterte, alongside the Department of Transportation, launched the Libreng Sakay Program (lit. transl. Free Rides Program) of the OVP, providing free rides as an effort to de-congest the roads during peak hours. It initially launched five buses bestowed by the department, deploying two in Metro Manila (plying the EDSA Carousel route) and one each in Bacolod, Cebu (plying Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu City, and Cebu City), and Davao City.
Following her designation as the co-vice chairperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) on May 11, 2023, she issued a warning to communist rebels and said the rebels' "so-called protracted war" must end.
On May 29, Duterte kicked off a nationwide distribution of one million bags containing school supplies and dental kits as well as the planting of one million trees under the OVP's “PagbaBAGo: A Million Learners and Trees” program in partnership with DepEd and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. As of October 2023, a total of 64,860 PagbaBAGo bags were distributed by the OVP to school children and planted 178,167 trees.
From July 2022 to October 2023, Duterte's OVP was able to provide ₱1.2 billion worth of medical assistance to 106,958 beneficiaries, with the office's burial assistance program providing ₱130.3 million worth of assistance to 22,470 families. Within the same time period, the office's Libreng Sakay Program served 523,263 commuters in Metro Manila, 89,605 commuters in Bacolod City, 60,409 commuters in Davao City, and 99,633 commuters in Cebu City. The OVP's Disaster Operations Center also conducted 162 relief operations and extended assistance worth ₱69.1 million to 115,045 families in times of disasters and calamities.
On November 25, 2022, Duterte established the Learner Rights and Protection Office (LRPO) under DepEd and launched its Telesafe Contact Center Helpline to address child abuse and strengthen child protection.
In August 2023, DepEd launched a new "less congested" and revised version of K–12, called the "Matatag curriculum". This version of the K–12 reduced the learning areas for students from seven to five and removed Mother Tongue as a separate subject; it also emphasized a "Makabansa" learning area to instill Filipino identity and nationalism among students. It will be implemented in phases from 2024 to 2028 on Kinder and Grades 1 to 10. The Matatag curriculum pilot implementation was well received by teachers, students, and parents. The Matatag Agenda and the Basic Education Development Plan 2030 as formulated by the DepEd under Duterte was later approved by President Marcos as the national policy and plan for basic education on April 27, 2024.
Amid a worsening rift between the Marcos and Duterte political clans, on June 19, 2024, Duterte resigned as Education Secretary. She formally handed over the post to her successor, Senator Sonny Angara, on July 18, 2024.
ON May 19, 2023, Duterte resigned from Lakas–CMD, stating that her leadership "cannot be poisoned by political toxicity." Her resignation came a few days after her political ally Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was demoted from her senior deputy speaker position in the House of Representatives following rumors that Arroyo allegedly planned to unseat Bongbong Marcos' cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez. In a speech in June 2023, Duterte acknowledged Marcos' support for her but stated that Marcos' middle name, Romualdez, was "unmentionable" amid reports of a falling out between her and the Speaker.
Duterte's relationship with the House worsened when her office's, as well as the education department's, use of confidential funds was questioned by the Philippine House Committee on Appropriations and the Philippine Senate Committee on Finance. The House would later remove her requested confidential funds from the proposed 2024 budget, while Duterte later rescinded her request for confidential funds, citing their "divisiveness."
In January 2024, former senator Antonio Trillanes claimed that Duterte was included as a “secondary respondent" in a crime against humanity case pending before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Arturo Lascañas, a retired police officer in Davao City, implicated Duterte as having had a role in extrajudicial killings (EJKs) after succeeding her father, Rodrigo Duterte, to become Davao City mayor in 2010. Duterte responded by saying that she never engaged with the Davao Death Squad (DDS) throughout her terms as Davao City mayor and vice mayor, and that she would face any charges only before judges and courts in the Philippines.
On March 11, 2025, Sara's father, former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, was arrested in Manila on the basis of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant charging him with crimes against humanity. Sara Duterte released a statement that her father's detention was "a blatant affront to our sovereignty and an insult to every Filipino who believes in our nation’s independence". Shortly after 11 p.m. PHT (UTC+08:00), a government-chartered private jet carrying Duterte along with his legal counsel, Salvador Medialdea, departed from Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Minutes after, President Bongbong Marcos held a televised press conference where he revealed that the flight would eventually continue to The Hague in the Netherlands, where Duterte was set to be arraigned for the indictment on charges of crimes against humanity at the ICC.
The following morning, Sara Duterte herself departed Manila for Amsterdam to support her father. On March 14, 2025, Duterte publicly disclosed that she would not return to Philippines for an unspecified period, stating that she would focus on forming her father's legal team. The next day, Duterte stated that she would not return to the Philippines until another family relative could arrive in the Netherlands to also ensure that her father would not be left alone. On April 7, 2025, she returned to the Philippines after a month of being with her detained father. Two weeks later, Sara Duterte formally endorsed Imee Marcos and Camille Villar in the Senate elections.
Inspite of many challenges, the entire Filipinos across country are showing their unending support to stand firm to all the Duterte family.
Coz for the many, this isn't about any colors of Politics. But it is about the Filipino that they stand for. "We are NOT Filipino for Nothing."
