The “Pink Movement” is snowballing after the “huge jump” in March of the survey ratings of Vice President Leni Robredo, said Sen. Franklin Drilon on Thursday.
Drilon said the elected officials “can feel the tides turning” with the release of the new Pulse Asia survey.
He expressed hope that more local officials will soon throw their full support to the candidacy of Robredo with the
increase in her survey ratings backed up by actual warm bodies on the ground
The most recent Pulse Asia survey shows the vice president posted a whopping nine percent, from 15 percent in February to 25 percent in March.
The “pivot” to the Robredo-Pangilinan camp of hundreds of influential officials in the regions, Drilon stressed was and will be “voluntary on their part.”
“I think more local officials will heed what their conscience and constituents are telling them, and that is to get behind a candidate who walks the talk and is the most principled among those who are running,” noted Drilon.
“They will do this with no quid pro quo,” said Drilon, adding that they would do it to have a chance to be in the “good graces of voters” and “on the right side of history.” He considered this priceless.
The “mutual meeting of the minds was not a product of the traditional political transaction,” said Drilon.
“No exchange deal, only the promise that a Robredo presidency will fight for the people and give our children a better future,” said the former Senate president.
He laughed off “troll-manufactured fake news” that the Robredo camp dangled financial support to entice elected local officials to shift allegiance.
Robredo meanwhile has maintained that former House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has never asked for anything in exchange for his support for her presidential bid.
She gave the assurance that her alliance with Alvarez, Davao del Norte Gov. Edwin Jubahib, and their Partido Reporma are “not transactional at all.”
She stressed Alvarez and Jubahib have not asked for any favor in return for their political machinery for her in Davao.
“I would have to assure everyone that there is no arrangement at all, that it was not transactional at all. In fairness to not just to the former speaker, but also the governor, they did not ask for anything in exchange,” she cited.
Alvarez, for his part, said many people had cast their doubt on him when he came out to support Robredo, especially that he was known to be a staunch supporter of President Rodrigo Duterte.
On March 23, Alvarez surfaced and backed Robredo’s presidential bid.
“I was very surprised. I was asking myself several times. Are you sure? Are you sure? So we never had any such discussion. I mean, there were no talks at all about their position. There was no such talk,” Robredo said. With Rio N. Araja