UNA bets woo Pampanga voters today

MANILA, Philippines - The nine senatorial candidates of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) will try to woo today the supporters of former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo without former President Joseph Estrada and Vice President Jejomar Binay.

Estrada told The STAR that he will not be able attend today’s campaign sortie due to a prior commitment, but will be joining the team in Zambales on Thursday. 

Binay’s spokesman Joey Salgado said the Vice President also has a prior commitment.

UNA candidates will start their swing through Central Luzon – a known bailiwick of Arroyo – with a motorcade and “boodle fight” breakfast before holding a mini-rally at the Angeles City public market. 

The UNA contingent will proceed to San Fernando and Magalang in the afternoon before coming up with another rally at the Sto. Niño Triangle in the capital city at 6 p.m.

UNA secretary-general and campaign manager Toby Tiangco said the rallies will focus on positive issues and will move away from political mudslinging.

Tiangco said the Liberal Party (LP)-led administration coalition started the campaign trail by throwing crabby personal attacks. He said there were even “false accusations against Binay, who is not even a candidate.”

He hit the LP for “having an arsenal of tirades ready to be thrown against the coalition – from personal ridicule, suggestion of misdeeds to racial slur.”

“We find it peculiar that corruption and political histories are sensitive issues with the LP, particularly those that are obviously staring at their faces. These are valid issues that needed to be squarely and directly answered,” he said.  

As this developed, Senate Pro-Tempore Jinggoy Estrada said common senatorial bets Loren Legarda and Francis Escudero should start recognizing UNA by attending its political rallies.

“When we were trying to form the ticket, they were originally in the draft. We were hoping that, since I think we first offered them slots in the senatorial slate,” Estrada said.

Legarda and Escudero have been doing their own campaigning, separate from the LP and UNA.

“When LP courted them, it was the President himself who talked to Senators Legarda and Escudero. How can your refuse the President? I fully understand their plight. UNA is the first to ask them to join. They have to recognize us as a force to reckon with. They should appear in our rallies,” Estrada said.

He said the final say on whether Legarda and Escudero will be booted out of the coalition will be the “decision of the hierarchy,” referring to his father, Binay and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile.

Estrada also downplayed speculations that Escudero’s decision not to join UNA in the campaigns can be attributed to their respective plans to run for higher office in 2016.

Shaky coalition

Meanwhile, the administration coalition is beginning to show cracks after one of the key leaders of the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) declared that the party would only support its members in the Team PNoy senatorial slate.

Former Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco, a son of NPC founder and chairman emeritus Eduardo Cojuangco, said the party will not throw its support behind the entire lineup.

The elder Cojuangco is an uncle of President Aquino, head of the LP.

Cojuangco’s brother Henry, a Tarlac congressman, is the party’s leader in the House of Representatives.

Mark, who is usually quiet, said the persecution of its key members, including Pangasinan Gov. Amado Espino and Rep. Jesus Celeste, as well as the move of the LP to field bets where there are already NPC candidates, prompted them to support only three senatorial aspirants. – Jess Diaz, Paolo Romero, Delon Porcalla, Ding Cervantes, Christina Mendez