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By Sam
Mediavilla, Reporter
The
administration’s Team Unity said on Sunday that the focus in the
May 2007 polls should be on the question of performance and not on
machinery versus popularity.
Team Unity
spokesman and Tourism Secretary Ace Durano said the Filipino people,
not personalities, should count most in the campaign debate.
Durano cited
previous elections to play down forecasts of the Genuine Opposition
bagging nine to 12 Senate seats in the midterm polls.
“We have
seen in past elections that candidates ranking high in surveys at
the start of a campaign ended up not making it and vice versa,”
Dureza said in a text message to The Manila Times.
He also said
that “majority of voters are interested in a plan to sustain
present economic gains rather than in raw popularity or entablado
[stage] intrigues.”
‘Sole GO
advocacy’
President
Arroyo’s political adviser, Gabriel Claudio, said it’s not just
machinery but the politics of achievement, performance and platform
of government that will help ensure victory for Team Unity.
“While the
opposition candidates may be popular characters in pre-campaign
surveys, people now see that there is no constructive agenda of
governance behind them. Their sole advocacy is hatred for the
administration, and the overthrow of PGMA,” Claudio said.
San Juan Mayor
Joseph Victor Ejercito, campaign manager of GO, challenged Team
Unity to a public debate on issues involving the interests of
Filipinos, including the “wiretapped conversation” alleged to be
of President Arroyo and an election commissioner.
Durano said
Team Unity’s “pulong sulong” would take government’s program
and its track record of success to the grassroots level nationwide.
“This will
generate the countrywide support and victory for Team Unity,”
Durano said.
Tit-for-tat
Palace
spokesman Ignacio Bunye said the government would not go down the
level of the opposition, saying the daily “tit-for-tat” which
the GO has been capitalizing since the start of the campaign will be
left to the spokesman or campaign manager of the unity ticket.
He said the
President has tasked the campaign manager and spokesman for Team
Unity to respond to the issues involving the election campaign while
she and her Cabinet will continue ensuring the country’s economic
gains.
The division
of tasks is important, Bunye said, so the national interest is not
held hostage to rhetoric.
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