After Noynoy-Binay, Chiz to endorse Sotto

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Chiz Escudero, after publicly announcing his support for the candidacy of Liberal Party presidential bet Noynoy Aquino and Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) vice presidential bet Jejomar Binay, is now preparing to shoot another campaign advertisement for Nationalist People’s Coalition’s lone senatorial bet.

He is scheduled to do a 30-second television commercial endorsing former senator Vicente Sotto III which will be aired later this week. Escudero’s campaign clip is expected to further boost the former Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) chairman’s chances of winning in the May 2010 national polls.

Sotto, who has been going around the country alone with no presidential, vice presidential, or fellow senatorial candidates to help him campaign, is also being endorsed by megastar Sharon Cuneta.

In an interview with reporters late Tuesday night, he said he is “very glad and very honored” to be endorsed by two very respected individuals in the political and entertainment industry. “I know how people look up to Sharon and Chiz,” he told reporters in an interview late Tuesday night before Cuneta came to shoot the campaign commercial at the Broadway Studios in San Juan.

Sotto said he’s known Escudero for quite a time now as a party-mate in the NPC and as a friend whom he has been with since the fight for Fernando Poe Jr. who ran for president in 2004. “Kung meron talagang real hardcore na kasangga ni FPJ, kami yun,” he told The STAR adding that when Escudero was thinking of running for president, “I was really backing him up.”

As for Cuneta, Sotto said there are many advertisers who have secured her endorsement because when she endorses, the product usually sells and becomes highly respectable.

Asked why Cuneta is endorsing him, Sotto said he would not be the right person to be asked the question though, “I would like to think that she knows that I am competent as manifested by my previous work at the Senate.”

“She knows my sincerity. She knows what I want to do. I would not even venture to say that one of the reasons is because we’re related because she had brothers and sisters who ran for public office but she never endorsed,” he said stressing that he didn’t even ask the megastar to help him because he didn’t want to bother her.

Cuneta, in a brief statement before the shoot of the campaign ad, said she really volunteered to do a commercial for Sotto who treats her as an eldest daughter. She said she even apologized that her endorsement is coming late since May 10 is already around the corner but Sotto said “it couldn’t have come at a better time.”