Piñol calls off plan to run for North Cotabato governor
KIDAPAWAN CITY – Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol has called off his plan to resign from the Duterte Cabinet, and run in the 2019 polls for the top executive post in North Cotabato, his home-province where he once served as governor for nine years and vice governor for one term.
“The plan is off. Ayaw pumayag ni PRRD,” Sec. Piñol told The Manila Bulletin Sunday, referring to his earlier announcement that he intended to run anew for governor of North Cotabato.
Piñol did not elaborate on his stalled plan – something that leaders of the country’s agriculture and fishery industries welcomed as “good news.”
“That’s good for greater majority, especially the country’s farmers and fisherfolk, who have yet to gain fully from the benefits of reforms and projects Secretary Piñol has introduced and is carrying out,” Sani D. Macabalang, a retired regional director Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), said of the cabinet official’s stalled political bid.
Leaders and supporters of the ruling PDP-Laban party in North Cotabato said the presidential decision would entail drastic changes in their plan to put up a Piñol-Rep. Nancy Catamco tandem against the team of incumbent Gov. Emmylou “Lala” Taliño-Mendoza and her father, Carmen town Mayor Roger Taliño, in the 2019 gubernatorial race.
Mendoza, now in her third gubernatorial term, is set to run for vice governor with her father gunning for governor in the upcoming polls, reliable sources said.
Piñol was first elected into public office in 1995 when he ran for mayor as substitute to his late father, former Cotabato Provincial Board member Bernardo Piñol Sr., in their hometown of M'Lang, North Cotabato.
In 1998, he was elected provincial governor, a position he held for three consecutive terms.
In 2007, Piñol ran for vice governor and won, with his former vice governor Jesus Sacdalan becoming the new governor.
In 2010, he ran for governor but lost to Mendoza, who outvoted him anew in a rematch in the 2013 gubernatorial contest.