By Sammy Martin Reporter
The ruling Lakas-Kampi Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD) is seriously considering the entry of President Gloria Arroyo as the vice presidential candidate of the party’s standard-bearer Defense Sec. Gilbert Teodoro in the 2010 elections.This was revealed on Friday by Ray Roquero, the deputy secretary general of Lakas-Kampi, who said that they could not discount the possibility that President Arroyo might seek the vice presidency. He cited the President being prohibited by the 1987 Constitution from seeking reelection.
“Should President Arroyo decide to run as VP [vice president] for the second time, I [would] not be surprised if she [was] endorsed by the party,” Roquero told reporters during the weekly forum Balitaan sa Hotel Rembrandt in Quezon City.
Mrs. Arroyo was voted vice president in the 1998 polls, when Joseph “Erap” Estrada was elected as president.
On Thursday, Rep. Danilo Suarez of Quezon floated the idea of President Arroyo being the running mate of Teodoro.
Revilla also in contention
Roquero said that Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. was recommended by three top local executives as the vice presidential candidate of Teodoro.
According to him, Revilla was strongly pushed by Mayor Ramon Guico Jr., national president of League of Municipalities of the Philippines; Gov. Leo Ocampos of Misamis Occidental, the head of the League of Provinces; and Mayor Jerry Pelayo of Candaba, Pampanga.
“All these three endorsers are deeply bred in the ideology and discipline of the old Lakas-CMD,” a quality they find in Revilla, Roquero said.
They also find the senator, he added, as a partyman of strong loyalty and belief in what the party is capable of achieving and one who can strengthen the party and bring to the presidential ticket his tested capacity to attract voters.
Revilla, a movie star, is known nationally, with a wide political base buttressed by his bailiwick Cavite province that has a voting base of more than one million.
He is the brother-in-law of Gov. Casimiro Ynares of Rizal province whose family is considered as the political kingpin in the Southern Tagalog provinces. Rizal is among the top 10 vote-rich provinces in the country.
His father, Ramon Revilla Sr., who had served 12 consecutive years as a senator, hails from Nueva Ecija, also a vote-rich province of Central Luzon.
December deadline
Whether Mrs. Arroyo was equally serious in taking another stab at the vice presidency would be known if she filed her certificate of candidacy for the post on December 1, the deadline for all candidates to do so.
“She has not said anything [about any plans to run for public office when her term expires next year].
Let’s just wait until December 1. Let’s have more suspense on this issue,” the President’s election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said during a briefing also on Friday.
Macalintal added that he has not heard anything from the President’s family discussing the matter or encouraging the President to run for another elective office in 2010.
“I don’t know anything. I’m not ready to answer that question. The President hasn’t mentioned anything with regard to her intention to run next year. And I don’t see somebody enticing the President to seek elective position [again],” he said.
But in case Mrs. Arroyo opted to run, Macalintal added, there would be no legal impediments to it.
Reactions from opposition
And in case she did, vice presidential aspirant and Mayor Jejomar Binay of Makati City said also on Friday, she would still give the next government a “headache.”
“How can the next administration focus on addressing the problems which Mrs. Arroyo will leave behind when you could still have her plotting ways to remain in power?” said Binay, also the president of the United Opposition.
“What the country needs is a vice president who won’t plot behind the back of the president and would sincerely care for the poor,” he added, referring to the overthrow of then sitting President Estrada in 2001 through a popular revolt led by then-Vice President Arroyo.
The President had better not run for vice president because she would only lose, according to a senator.
“Her chances of winning in nationwide elections for the vice presidency are remote,” Sen. Francis Pangilinan said in a statement.
He cited Mrs. Arroyo’s poor approval ratings and alleged public disenchantment with her leadership.
Pangilinan said that he believes the President has her sights on local politics, “where she has better chances of winning.”
Decision to run
Mrs. Arroyo, according to her election lawyer Macalintal, was not even keeping scores.
Commenting on a petition filed by five Pampanga mayors for the President to run, this time for Congress, he said that the President was not affected by that endorsements, and that she would decide based on her own assessment of the situation.
When asked if Mrs. Arroyo is still undecided on running again for political office, Macalintal said, “Not that she is undecided but it’s because it has not entered her mind whether she would be running in the coming political exercise.”
On a house allegedly owned by the President in her hometown Lubao in Pampanga province, the election lawyer clarified that it has nothing to do with her future political plans.
The house is owned by Eva Development Corp., while the land is a property of the Diosdado Macapagal Foundation, Macalintal said. It will hold memorabilia of Mrs. Arroyo’s late father, former President Diosdado Macapagal.
With Reports From Angelo S. Samonte And Cris G. Odronia
Source: http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/top-stories/5462-lakas-kampi-keen-on-gma-as-vp-bet
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