POLICE Chief Ronald dela Rosa was not included in the initial list of senatorial candidates of the ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan in the 2019 elections.
This was based on the list of Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III, the party’s national president who said he limited the names to those who were already members of PDP-Laban as of Friday.
Pimentel said President Rodrigo Duterte, the party’s chairman, will not allow the members of his Cabinet to run for senator in the 2019 midterm elections.
He said there were five other initial candidates on his list aside from him: Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas, Reps. Alfredo Benitez (Negros Occidental), Geraldine Roman (Bataan), Karlo Nograles (Davao City) and former Metro Manila Development Authority chairman Francis Tolentino.
Pimentel slammed Dela Rosa for calling the critics of the government’s war against illegal drugs as “ingrates” following the controversies hounding it.
He stressed that his list of candidates was a “developing/evolving” matter and therefore was not final.
So far, Pimentel is the only original member of PDP-Laban, the political party founded by his father, former Senate president Aquilino Pimentel II, in the Senate.
He will lead party’s senatorial slate in the coming midterm elections.
“We will try our best to come up with a complete 12-person slate. If we cannot come up with 12, then we are open to entering into coalition agreements with other parties,” he said.
