Aquino to name Mar tomorrow – LP officials
Liberals to meet at Club Filipino
President Benigno Aquino III has made his choice on whom to endorse as his successor and it will be Secretary of Interior and Local Government Mar Roxas, Liberal Party political affairs chief Rep. Edgar Erice of Caloocan said yesterday.
Erice said President Aquino will make the announcement tomorrow morning at Club Filipino in San Juan, the same venue where the chief executive’s bid for the presidency was declared in 2010.
The choice for Roxas’ runningmate will be announced later after LP and its coalition partners have arrived at a consensus on the issue, he added.
“From day one, we at LP never doubted the President will give
his blessings to Secretary Roxas. I never entertained any doubt in my mind that he will be it because he is the most qualified in terms of continuing what President Aquino has started in Daang Matuwid.”
Salceda confirms Albay Gov. Joey Salceda confirmed that Secretary Roxas has the anointment of the President, adding that the formal announcement would be done at 9 a.m. on Friday at the Club Filipino in San Juan.
“Mar (Roxas) called during our meeting of the core group of his campaign at Balay and announced that the President has anointed him — ‘given the go-signal’,” said Salceda in his Facebook post.
Based on his post, Salceda appeared to have been given a big task for the 2016 elections for the Liberal Party, which he joined in 2010 elections in favor of Aquino, his classmate at the Ateneo de Manila University.
“Based on the meeting, I guess I will be making robust inputs to the national campaign aside from being Regional LP Chairman based on my discussions with Mar,” said Salceda.
Salceda has openly declared his support for Roxas during the latter’s past visit in Albay, even introducing him as the next President of the Republic of the Philippines.
Tomorrow’s event will be attended by LP men and other members of the political parties and party-list groups allied with the LP in a coalition formed by President Aquino during the senatorial election in 2013.
Erice said that after the President’s announcement of Roxas’ candidacy, there will be a mass endorsement of incumbent elective officials, including congressmen, governors, and local leaders, next week.
He rejected claims that a Roxas endorsement will weaken the coalition whose members might gravitate towards presidential bets with better poll survey ratings. On the contrary, he said, Roxas’ leadership will further strengthen both LP and the coalition’s solidarity.
Erice said Sen. Grace Poe is still being considered as vice-presidential bet of the administration coalition.
Other names floated by coalition partners as possible Roxas running-mates are Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, Batangas Gov. Vilma Santos, and Senators Francis Escudero and Alan Peter Cayetano.
Poe-Escudero tandem
Meanwhile, other reports said Senators Poe and Escudero may be partnering to run together as independent bets or as adopted candidates of the Nationalist People’s Coalition and the Nationalist Unity Party.
On Tuesday, Escudero resigned from his posts as chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance and co-chairman of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Public Expenditures, saying he is considering running for a higher position in government.
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, vice-chairman of the Liberal Party, lauded Escudero for his decision and called on other officials similarly situated to the same.
House Deputy Majority Leader Rep. Sherwin Tugna of the party-list group Citizens’ Battle against Corruption, also said, “I believe that all public officials should have the delicadeza to resign from their post if they believe and feel that their integrity will be questioned, in case they run and win the election.”
Rep. Isidro Ungab, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, said, “We laud Senator. Escudero for considering the immediate passage of General Apprpriations Act in his decision to resign from his assigned committee,” Ungab said.