Mar, Loren show up at PMA homecoming, won't talk politics

FORT DEL PILAR, Baguio City, Philippines – Two presidential hopefuls showed up at the Philippine Military Academy alumni homecoming yesterday but said they were there to show their support for their “mistahs” and not to engage in politicking.

“I stand united with our soldiers as an acknowledgment of their vital contribution to our nation,” Sen. Manuel Roxas II, an adopted member of Class 84, said in Filipino.

Sen. Loren Legarda, an adopted member of Class 69, also called on her “mistahs” to “shun politics today.”

It was her first time to join the reunion since her adoption as mistah more than a decade ago.

She waved to the crowd while on parade with her mistahs on Borromeo Field.

Roxas, reportedly Liberal Party’s standard-bearer for the 2010 presidential polls, said the country’s soldiers need more recognition considering the risk they take everyday.  “It is time that we show that we are with them,” he explained.

Asked to share some information regarding Roxas’s political plans, mistah Sr. Supt. Robert Kiunasala said, “We have not talked about that.” 

But some members of “Maharlika” class of 1984 who declined to be named said Roxas’s presidential ambition has been “programmed” in many class meetings. 

“This is not the time for politics,” Kiunasala insisted.

Other presidentiables including former Senate president Manuel Villar, an adopted member of Class 77, and Sen. Panfilo Lacson of Class 71 were not around for the homecoming.

Last week, Lacson claimed he could not make it to the homecoming because of his work in the Senate. 

Villar, who was in Baguio City on Friday for the “Villar National Billiards Cup” at SM Baguio, left for Manila on the same day.

Large tarpaulins bearing his image though lined the Loakan Road leading to the PMA campus.

No secret

Quezon City Vice Mayor Herbert Bautista, a “mistah” of Roxas in class 84, made no secret of his plan to run for mayor of Quezon City.

But Bautista insisted his political plans had nothing to do with his showing up at the reunion.

Former Caloocan City mayor Reynaldo Malonzo, an adopted member of Class 79, also spoke openly about his plan to join “a formidable line-up” with Baby Asistio as mayor. 

Sen. Rodolfo Biazon of Class 59 showed up as expected and without fanfare.

But many lower classmen posed for photos with the former Armed Forces chief who helped crush several coup attempts in the 1990s against then President Corazon Aquino. – Artemio Dumlao