Speaker: Impeach trial boosts re-election bid of House prosecutors
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said yesterday said the success of the members of the prosecution team during the impeachment trial of former chief justice Renato Corona boosts their chances in next year’s elections.
Belmonte said the approval rating of many in the prosecution team, who are running for reelection or for senator next year, went up after the guilty verdict was handed down.
“The publicity that they got should be enough bonus. Just look where (Cagayan Rep. Jack) Enrile (Jr.) and (Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo) Angara are now, they’re all in the limelight,” Belmonte said, when asked if the chamber will grant bonuses to the prosecution team.
Angara, son of Sen. Edgardo Angara, was among the spokespersons for the prosecution panel during the trial. He is reportedly planning to run for senator under the administration Liberal Party (LP).
Enrile’s father, the Senate President, was widely admired by the public for his fair and strict handling of the impeachment trial as presiding officer. The younger Enrile is reportedly running for senator under the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) of Vice President Jejomar Binay and former President Joseph Estrada.
A Pulse Asia survey last May showed Enrile in fourth place and Angara in 12th place if elections were held today.
Asked about Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas Jr., the head of the prosecution panel who was earlier rumored to be interested in running for senator, Belmonte said: “Tupas will be unbeatable in his district. I’m sure that they are all very proud of him.”
Belmonte, an LP stalwart, said he was unfazed by the latest surveys showing only a few party members in the top 12 senatorial candidates.
“There’s no such thing as an LP slate... The idea is to elect as many as possible of like-minded people, not necessarily of the same party,” Belmonte said.
“I think politics dictates that you may put few new faces there, and people who are already recognizable and have good views and still constitutionally able to run, I think that’s okay,” he added.
LP opens doors to Koko
Meanwhile, LP stalwart Sen. Francis Pangilinan said Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III is welcome to become a candidate of the LP coalition “if he is in search of an alternative to the UNA lineup.”
Pangilinan, who served as campaign manager of the senatorial bets of LP in the 2010 elec- tions, said he would personally lobby for the inclusion of Pimentel in his party’s lineup for 2013 if the latter will accept his offer.
“He will be more than welcome to the ticket and should he decide to affiliate himself with us, I am willing to help him do so and persuade the leadership of the party and the coalition to include him in the ticket,” Pangilinan said.
Pimentel, president of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Laban ng Bayan, has waged a campaign to remove former senator Juan Miguel Zubiri from the senatorial ticket of UNA.
Pimentel said that he will not be able to campaign with Zubiri, the subject of his electoral protest in the 2007 elections.
“If UNA requires me to run with an election cheat before help is extended to me, then I am prepared to lose, for as long as I remain true to what I passionately believe in,” Pimentel said in a letter to Estrada.–