Leni vows not to leave Mar behind

MANILA, Philippines – With her ratings improving faster than that of Liberal Party presidential candidate Mar Roxas, LP vice presidential bet Leni Robredo said yesterday she would not leave her standard bearer behind.

Robredo said she was still surprised by her 21 percent rating from the March 1 to 6 Pulse Asia poll that put her in a statistical tie with Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

The vice presidential survey – topped by Sen. Francis Escudero – showed her numbers improved by three percent in less than three weeks based on the previous poll conducted by the same outfit. 

She noted a Social Weather Stations survey also showed a five-percentage point increase, from 19 percent in February to 24 percent in its poll last week.

“I’m very, very happy. I started at one percent and now I’m just four points behind (Escudero). I can’t believe that I’ll be closing in this fast. We’re always working for the best, I just hope we’ll be able to maintain our trajectory until the end,” the Camarines Sur lawmaker told reporters in Batangas where she and Roxas campaigned along with senatorial candidates from the Daang Matuwid Coalition.

Roxas is banking on the local campaign that starts on March 25 to boost his chances of winning with only 54 days left before the May 9 elections.

He wooed local officials at the League of Governors’ meeting in Manila, saying the record of the administration speaks for itself – there was no favoritism and that the gains obtained by provinces must continue.

“You are all examples and witness to what happened in the last five years and what can happen in the next six years if we make the right choice,” Roxas said.

He said all provinces received an average of P5 billion to P10 billion in the last five years in terms of infrastructure projects, believing that the national government will not succeed if its local counterparts are not progressive.

“You can count on me to continue to improve and strengthen our partnership if I win. You are the fulcrum of development in our provinces,” Roxas told the governors.

He vowed to allocate P1,000 for each Filipino under a souped up version of the administration’s “bottom-up budgeting (BUB)” program or a total of P100 billion for all provinces.

Sustained campaign

Robredo attributed the rise in ratings to the efforts to make her known to the public. She said towards the fourth quarter of 2015, she only had more or less 50 percent awareness rating among voters.

Because of her rising ratings, she has emerged as a big threat to Escudero and Marcos and the two are now scrambling to stop her from gaining further momentum.

Robredo’s other rivals are Sens. Gregorio Honasan, Antonio Trillanes and Alan Peter Cayetano. 

“Now I’m at 90 percent (awareness) already, so covering as much ground as possible is key so that more people will personally see and listen to me in the last 55 days,” she said. 

She said that based on experience, voter conversion rate for her is high – referring to converting people with other vice presidential candidate in mind to vote for her. 

Robredo believes that voters can easily relate to her because her concerns are the same as those of ordinary people, particularly women and mothers who are undergoing various challenges and hardships. 

In campaign sorties, she always relates how she reluctantly joined politics in 2013 after several years of raising her family and at the same time working as a pro-bono lawyer for poor and battered women in Camarines Sur. 

She often tells her audience of how she and her family are still coping with the death of her husband, the late interior secretary Jesse Robredo, who died in a plane crash in 2012, and how Roxas stayed with them throughout their ordeal. 

“Maybe because I grew up in the province and worked with the poor and oppressed for a long time that I easily relate with people and they to me,” Robredo said. – With Alexis Romero