Sen. Grace Poe
Sen. Grace Poe

Strategists of the Liberal Party (LP) are preparing for the possibility that survey frontrunner Sen. Grace Poe will not take the administration party’s wagon in next year’s elections.

Malacañang spokesman Edwin Lacierda on Monday said that like all other political parties, the LP has planned for “worst-case scenarios.”

“I think each party prepares. This answer perhaps is not limited to the Liberal Party,” Lacierda replied when asked during his regular news briefing if the LP is ready if Poe and Sen. Francis Escudero leave the administration coalition.

“As in any organization, as in any individual, the answer is, you hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” he said.

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Poe and Escudero, who are not members of the LP, ran for senator in 2013 under the administration’s coalition party.

Lacierda said the LP, which President Benigno Aquino 3rd heads, is “anticipating all the

options that may or may not happen.”

But he added, “These are political configurations, which [are] yet to be finalized. [I guess I should] hold off [making] statements [for now] and once [things get firmed up, that is the time when] we will make an announcement or the President himself can say something about it.”

Aquino recently met with Poe and Escudero and discussed with them the 2016 polls.

According to Escudero, the President is yet to decide on whom he would endorse in next year’s elections.

While Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas 2nd is the presumptive standard-bearer of the LP, he is far behind Poe who is topping pre-election presidential and vice presidential surveys.

Poe, daughter of the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. and actress Susan Roces, recently overtook Vice President Jejomar Binay in surveys conducted by the Social Weather Stations as well as Pulse Asia.

She had said that if she ran for President, she would be more comfortable with Escudero as her running mate.

The President plans to again meet with the two senators as well as Roxas to make the LP ticket final.

Aquino earlier said he will publicly name his preferred successor within July or after he delivers his last State of the Nation Address on July 27.

Poe on Sunday confirmed that the President has asked her to go around the country with Roxas.

She, however, clarified that the request was made in May and the topic was not raised again when they met last week.