Malacañang has admitted yesterday that Vice President Jejomar Binay’s senatoriable allies will not be in the administration’s senatorial slate and maintained that although he is supportive of the administration of President Aquino, he has his own party to run in the 2013 mid-term elections.
At the same time, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda claimed at a press briefing yesterday that Aquino was not engaged in premature politicking when he disclosed in a television interview some names whom he wants to run as administration senatorial candidates in 2013 and was merely citing personalities whom he believes “will advance further the cause of reform.”
Lacierda also dismissed observations that Aquino’s decision to miss mentioning senatoriables who are identified with the camp of Binay as nothing unusual because the two leaders belong to two different political parties anyway.
Lacierda said that although Binay is supportive of Aquino and he is “part of the official team” the Vice President “has its own political party and he would like also to advance his senatorial slate and that’s something that is a political reality.”
“The Vice President is part of the official team. We all know that the Vice President does not belong to the same party that the President belongs to. So right now we are in a position — we’re in a stage where we need to further the reforms of government, and it so happens that the Vice President also believes in the reforms advanced by the President. So there’s no problem and there’s no reason why there should be a falling out. It is understandable that the Vice President has its own political party and he would like also to advance his senatorial slate and that’s something that is a political reality. And that’s what the President mentioned,” Lacierda said.
Parrying criticisms of Aquino’s early politicking, Lacierda also stressed that Aquino was merely responding to a question about his possible Senate slate when he enumerated his choices for possible administration senatorial candidates in the aftermath of tropical storm “Sendong” that left thousands dead and homeless.
“It was a statement made out — response to a question. But it’s not politicking. He mentioned personalities who were previously involved or previously were with him during the presidential campaign who ran as senators. So it’s not surprising that he will echo the same personalities he, whom he believes in, and who may believe will advance further the cause of reform,” Lacierda claimed.
In a television interview on Tuesday, Aquino said he wanted defeated senatorial candidates Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, Ruffy Biazon (now Customs commissioner), Danny Lim (now Customs intelligence head), and incumbent Sen. Antonio Trillanes to be part of the Liberal Party (LP) slate in 2013.
The President also wants Budget Secretary Florencio Abad on the list, but the Cabinet official declined the offer.
Abad was Aquino’s campaign manager in the senatorial and presidential campaigns in 2007 and 2010, respectively.
Asked why Aquino obviously failed to mention personalities associated with Vice President Binay and his PDP-Laban party, Lacierda said that Aquino belongs to the LP and, therefore, it would be unlikely that the President would be endorsing personalities who are not his partymates.
It is no secret, however, that while Binay is supportive of the Aquino administration, he is expected to be pitted against Transportation and Communications Secretary Manuel Roxas II, a bosom friend of Aquino and an LP stalwart.
Incidentally, Aquino noted in the same television interview that he is already grooming a “successor who’ll sustain reforms in government.”
During an interview over ABS-CBN News Channel on Tuesday evening, Aquino said it is important that the reforms he has initiated in the bureaucracy are sustained in the future “so that the country doesn’t go back to its previous state.”
“The point is if we are able to really transform the country. So that’s the target, that we will be successful in training our successor and the successor is an inheritor of something that is so good that people are so used to that system that there’s no possibility of backsliding,” the President said when asked about how he views retirement in 2016.
Expressing his views over anointing a successor, the President said he always encounters question from some community leaders asking him how these reforms are continued after his stint as President.
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