Trillanes: Chiz is the ‘man to beat’

Senator Antonio “Sonny” Trillanes IV concedes that Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero is the “man to beat” in the vice presidential race.

Even in his privately commissioned survey, Trillanes said Sen. Grace PoeLlamanzares’ running mate is way ahead of the pack.

Aside from Trillanes and Escudero, the others running for vice president are Senators Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., Gregorio Honasan, Allan Peter Cayetano and Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo.

Marcos, Trillanes and Cayetano are members of the Nacionalista Party (NP) but they are running as independents because the NP has declared the vice-presidential race a “free zone”. Honasan is a member of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) while Robredo is a Liberal Party (LP) member.

Honasan, Escudero, Trillanes and Robredo all come from Bicol and will split thin the Bicol votes.

Of the six VP aspirants, Trillanes said it would be Robredo who will have a hard time catching up in the campaign.

Robredo, widow of the late Naga City mayor, Ramon Magsaysay awardee and former Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo is running in tandem with Mar Roxas.

“It’s still Sen. Escudero. It’s very difficult to introduce a candidate for vice president,” Trillanes said during a roundtable discussion with editors of the Manila Bulletin.

Trillanes believes Robredo’s chances are big had she ran for the Senate instead of vice president.

“Probably as a senator the voting public can give you space, but for president and vice presidential candidates, there should be a longer investment in terms of earning their trust because voting for the presidency and the vice presidency is about trust,” the former coup leader turned politician said.

Hit and miss “You won’t trust somebody you don’t really know. Whether its fed to you by advertisements, I don’t think that would be enough for a new candidate,” he said.

“And relatively I’m new compared to the other names, so that’s why Chiz is the default or top of mind candidate to beat,” added the senator.

But Trillanes who traces his roots in Albay and Capiz said he has already mapped out plans to boost his chances against Escudero and is already anticipating the result of the next Magdalo in-house survey.

“We don’t really rely on Pulse Asia and Social Weather Station (SWS) surveys,” Trillanes, a former Navy officer said of the two giant pollsters.

“They missed me in 2007 (elections). In 2007, Pulse Asia said I will end up number 22 and SWS said will be number 16 and we have that documented,” he pointed out.

Trillanes ran for Senator in 2007 as a guest candidate of the Genuine Opposition and won. He used the power of social media and campaigned from his detention cell with the help of his comrades in the Magdalo group.

In the 2013 elections, he won again and ranked ninth (9th) in the 12-man senatorial slate.

The senator noted that both Pulse Asia and SWS missed other prominent candidates in the previous surveys.

“So they missed me, how can I follow them? It’s sad that the media, for lack of other credible sources are presenting these two survey panels as credible, but they’re not,” Trillanes lamented.

In the Magdalo in-house survey, Escudero is leading with 53.8 percent. Trillanes is trailing him with 22.6 percent. Batangas Governor Vilma Santos-Recto is third with 16.2 percent followed by Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano with 5.3 percent.