A detained Filipino preacher who faces charges of sexual abuse in both the Philippines and the United States has registered to run in the country’s Senate elections next year, in an apparent attempt to evade prosecution.
Apollo Quiboloy, who is in police custody after his arrest last month, has registered with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) via his lawyer, who yesterday submitted a certificate of candidacy on his behalf.
“He wants to be a part of the solution to the problems of our country,” lawyer Mark Christopher Tolentino said, according to an ABC report. “He is running because of God and our beloved Philippines.” He added that he will seek to promote laws that are “God-centered, Philippine-centered and Filipino-centered.”
The 74-year-old’s candidacy was filed on the final day of the weeklong registration period for the midterm elections that will be held in May 2025. In addition to elections for 12 of the 24 seats in the Philippine Senate, candidates will compete for 317 seats in Congress, 82 governorships and vice-governorships, and thousands more executive and legislative positions at lower levels of government.
Quiboloy is perhaps the most surprising of the 184 candidates that have enlisted to contest the 12 Senate seats, which also include television host Willie Revillame, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s former executive secretary Vic Rodriguez, boxer-turned-senator Manny Pacquiao and Marcos’s politically estranged sister, Senator Imee Marcos. Also flirting with the idea of a Senate run was former President Rodrigo Duterte, who instead will run for mayor of the southern city of Davao, a position he held for more than two decades prior to winning the presidency in 2016.
On September 8, Quiboloy, the founder of the Kingdom of Jesus mega-church surrendered to police with four other suspects at his church’s vast compound in the southern Philippines, bringing an end to a months-long manhunt.
According to a Rappler report, there are some uncertainties about Quiboloy’s election bid. While his certificate of candidacy indicates that he was nominated by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, the party’s president, chairperson, and senior vice president have all denied signing the certification of nomination and acceptance.
Quiboloy went into hiding in April, after a court in Davao issued warrants for the arrest of Quiboloy and several associates for child abuse and sexual abuse. The Senate has also issued a separate arrest order against him, for failing to attend hearings of a committee, led by Senator Risa Hontiveros, investigating allegations of abuses within the Kingdom of Jesus church. He also faces a raft of charges in the United States, including conspiracy, sex trafficking of children, sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, marriage fraud, money laundering, cash smuggling, and visa fraud.
Quiboloy has denied all of the charges against him, claiming that they have been ginned up by disgruntled former members of his church in order to discredit him. That said, it is hard not to see his surprise Senate bid as an attempt to evade prosecution, perhaps by leveraging his long-standing relationship with the Duterte clan. Quiboloy is a close supporter and spiritual adviser of former President Rodrigo Duterte, and threw his weight behind Duterte’s presidential campaign in 2016. Duterte has been an outspoken critic of Quiboloy’s treatment by the police since his arrest.
In his pursuit of a Senate seat, the disgraced pastor is enabled by Philippine law, which states that candidates are only disqualified from running for election if they have exhausted all avenues of appeal after being convicted of offenses involving “moral turpitude,” according to the ABC report.