Is former President and current Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada still pushing the presidential bid of his United Nationalist Alliance party-mate Vice President Jejomar Binay? Or is Estrada now backing another bet – Senator Grace Poe – in next year’s elections?
Well, it looks like the latter, if my informants are to be believed. That’s because Estrada recently went to the headquarters of the Iglesia Ni Cristo in Quezon City with Poe, to seek the bloc-voting church’s endorsement of his late best buddy’s adoptive daughter.
I’m told that INC Executive Minister Eduardo Manalo himself met Erap and Grace when they visited. And that Manalo was receptive to Estrada’s proposal for the INC to vote for Poe in May next year.
But Manalo was said to have set a condition for supporting Poe. The INC head said he could ask the church to vote for the senator – as long as Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. doesn’t run for the presidency himself.
It turns out that Manalo and other leaders of the church had conducted a survey among INC members prior to Estrada’s and Poe’s visit. The all-INC opinion poll reportedly found that Marcos was the church’s members’ preferred candidate for President, which is why Manalo told his two visitors that he would support Poe only if Marcos did not run.
The same internal INC survey supposedly discovered that the church’s members favored Marcos, Poe and Binay, in that order, at the time the poll was taken. That was good enough for Estrada and Poe and they left happy after the audience, I’m told.
Of course, Poe has not yet declared her intentions, although she has already turned down President Noynoy Aquino’s repeated requests for her to become the running mate of his presumptive anointed, Secretary Mar Roxas. But the visit with Erap to the INC’s “Sentral,” as members call the church headquarters, should have given her more incentive to run for the highest post in the land independent of her main political patron, Aquino.
No one is certain if Marcos would run, with or without the INC’s support. But assuming – as many have assumed – that Ferdinand and Imelda’s son runs for vice president, it looks like he will have a lock on the Iglesia’s all-important vote.
As for Roxas, who is supposedly going to declare his presidential intentions today, the INC’s conditional endorsement of Poe can only mean bad news. At the rate things are going, he will only be able to count on the support of a small, ever-dwindling core of Liberal Party members who are also Roxas diehards by May.
Aquino’s endorsement, already of doubtful efficacy, could even work against Roxas. And, if Aquino decides that staying out of jail is more important than fulfilling his promise to support his BFF, it may not even happen.
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Speaking of Roxas’ dwindling chances, it should be noted that his endorser has found yet another group of people to annoy and alienate in last Monday’s State-of-the-Nation Address. I’m talking about the faculty, students and alumni of the University of Santo Tomas, who are up in arms after the President alluded to them – without naming them, as usual – as opposing a flood control project because of their inordinate love for several old buildings.
The situation created by the Atenean President was exacerbated by his La Sallite spokesman, Edwin Lacierda, who explained that the UST community must sacrifice instead of giving priority to “a prized soccer field.” The UST administration has not officially reacted to the one-two attack from Malacanang – but their online communities were understandably worked up.
One online response from a group calling itself STAND UST said that Aquino should not ask the university to sacrifice some more because they already suffer from government neglect and private overdevelopment around their Manila campus. “The continuous elevation of roads surrounding UST have made our campus a catch basin of flood throughout time,” the group said.
“It is important for the administration to consider clearing natural waterways in Manila,” the group said, instead of digging up the campus to build an underground “retarding tank” under the university, it said. The remark is “yet another immature and arrogant innuendo” from the President, the group said.
No wonder Mar Roxas took so long praying before the graves of his dead ancestors before agreeing to becoming Aquino’s chosen one. By the time the polls open, it’s perfectly possible for Aquino’s endorsement to be the political equivalent of an anvil tied to the endorsee’s neck.
Oh, well. Aquino only promised his endorsement to Roxas, after all; he never said it was going to make Mar win.