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By their body language, two senators—Mar Roxas of
the Liberal Party and Manny Villar of the Nacionalista Party—have
shown that they will run for president in the 2010 national
election. With Vice-President Noli de Castro also running, the
presidential contest will be a three-cornered fight unless another
senator, Loren Legarda, makes up her mind to join the fray.
Roxas has made no bones of his
interest in the country’s top political plum within the gift of
the Filipino people. He has the advantage of name recall, being by
accident of birth, the grandson of the late President Manuel Roxas.
He has the wherewithal needed to
bankroll a costly presidential campaign, being a scion of the
wealthy Araneta family. To cap it all, he holds the record of having
topped the 2004 senatorial race to show his vote-getting power.
Villar, like Roxas, has been
nursing a presidential ambition since heading the leadership of the
House of Representatives and the Senate. He was the speaker when the
House voted to impeach then President Joseph Estrada. He became
Senate president as a result of a term-sharing agreement with then
Senate President Franklin Drilon.
Although he has not topped a
senatorial contest, Villar made an impressive win in the last
senatorial election by placing fourth in the final standings of the
12 winning candidates. Villar has no problem with money, being one
of the richest men in the Philippines today.
De Castro looms as the logical
presidential candidate of the administration. President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo, barred from running for reelection, appears to
have no choice but to support him as her rightful and deserving
successor.
De Castro’s record of having
topped the Senate race himself before becoming vice-president is
also proof of his vote-getting potential in a presidential election,
especially if given total support by the President.
Backing up a winnable candidate
becomes the President’s moral and tactical imperative. She needs a
winner who can help her survive a possible political and legal storm
to be whipped up by her political enemies after she steps down at
the end of her term in 2010.
That person is none other than de
Castro who stood by her through all her political crises, including
an impeachment case against her, in the past.
The President has the option of
reviving the move for Charter change as a means of perpetuating her
in power through her election as a prime minister. But this may no
longer work, given the people’s mood against any move to do away
with the presidential system.
In a presidential race, Legarda
cannot be totally discounted as a candidate. She has been playing
coy for sometime but the good timing and the chance not only of
proving that she is more popular than de Castro but also of winning
the presidency are too tempting to make her decide to run.
Legarda topped the last
senatorial race with a record vote of more than 18 million,
duplicating her feat in the 1998 elections. This is a record
unmatched by anyone in the history of the senatorial contest.
In the 2004 vice-presidential
race, Legarda lost to de Castro. However, she questioned his victory
in a protest lodged with the Vice-Presidential Electoral Tribunal.
Legarda, the running mate of opposition presidential candidate
Fernando Poe, claimed that she had been cheated in an election
marked by massive fraud.
She decided to forego her protest
when she ran in the last senatorial election.
There is a principle that an
incumbent senator who runs for another elective office and loses can
return to his seat to complete an unfinished term. It happened in
the case of Sen. Lito Lapid who ran for mayor of Makati City against
Jejomar Binay and lost miserably. Lapid was able to retain his
Senate seat.
If Legarda runs for the
presidency in 2010 and loses, can she also retain her seat in the
Senate and finish her six-year term? If the answer is yes, Legarda
may have to explore this advantage and try her luck.
If she wins, she could claim with
strong moral conviction that she did beat de Castro in the
controversial 2004 vice-presidential race.
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