MANILA, Philippines (Updated 5:19 p.m.) — Vice President Leni Robredo is among the personalities being considered by the Liberal Party to become its standard bearer in the 2022 elections, party president Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan said Thursday.
“[She is] a high official of the party and is also the highest elected official of the party. So she is also being considered,” Pangilinan said partly in Filipino in a media briefing. Robredo is Liberal Party chair.
But Pangilinan was quick to echo Robredo, who told ABS-CBN Teleradyo in November 2020 that she has no plans to run for the presidency.
“She, herself, has said that she has no decision yet. A lot of things can happen,” Pangilinan said partly in Filipino.
Pangilinan said the Liberal Party, which was the ruling party before President Rodrigo Duterte was elected to Malacañang in 2016, is currently focusing on recruiting from the grassroots and helping communities get through the pandemic.
“Hopefully if we’re able to show a good performance, then voters will remember that and will support us,” he said.
It may appear that the Liberal Party leadership is keeping its hands off the 2022 elections for now, but party internal vice president Rep. Teddy Baguilat met Monday a “core group” of Robredo supporters in Quezon to push her to run for president.
Kilos na. Meeting of core group ng Quezon for LENI 2022 movement in Lucena City. pic.twitter.com/4jcX5OiieN
— Teddy B. Baguilat (@TeddyBaguilatJr) February 1, 2021
“We need a new captain with better ideas and a person who can unite us,” Baguilat said on Twitter, punctuating it with the hashtag #Leni2022.
An online petition urging Robredo to run for president is also making the rounds, with it garnering over 20,000 signatures as of writing.
Reacting to Pangilinan's statement, Robredo's camp neither confirmed or denied if the vice president has plans to run for president in 2022, only saying that she is focused on working to help Filipinos overcome the challenges of the pandemic and the lengthy quarantine.
"This is the need of the moment and her priority right now," Robredo spokesperson Barry Gutierrez said in a statement. "Everything else will be addressed at the proper time."
Pangilinan earlier gave a similar remark, saying that Robredo has no decision yet and "a lot of things can happen."
Robredo lagged behind pro-administration candidates in the latest Pulse Asia survey on potential presidential candidates, where Duterte’s daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte took a clear lead.
But surveys as early as this rarely predict the outcome of the elections, with many events still to transpire in the political arena in the coming months.