Vice President Leni Robredo is inclined to decide whether she would run for president or not in the 2022 elections by September or October before the filing of the certificate of candidacy with the Commission on Elections.
“For my decision-making, I have set a deadline on Oct. 8. If I could be able to decide by September, then I would do so by September. Once I have filed (my CoC), I will no longer withdraw it,” she said during her weekly radio program last Sunday.
But she said she wanted to focus more on the COVID-19 pandemic efforts than to think about politics.
“Because of the surge (of cases), we cannot afford to stop our efforts. We have to focus on these. Our office continues to do initiatives to be able to help in the vaccination, telemedicine, emergency services, (and) community feeding,” Robredo said.
“Let us focus more on the pandemic effort. Hopefully, after two weeks, we could get more encouraging numbers (of cases) so we can give more time for the 2022 election, she added.
The Vice President admitted the claim of Senator Panfilo Lacson that she rejected his unification formula in Eleksyon 2022, saying she only wanted to be certain about her 2022 plans.
“It is just as simple as that why I resisted the proposal. The fight must go on. Once I have filed, I need to continue the fight. There is no backing out because I have already presented myself to the public. That is the reason why I was not agreeable to the proposal,” she said
Lacson said it was a selfless move on his part to offer the unification formula to Robredo since she was after a united opposition/front in 2022.
“After all, it was her objective for liaising with different forces or candidates including Manila Mayor Francisco ‘Isko Moreno’ Domagoso, Sen. Manny Pacquiao, Sen. Richard Gordon, among others.
Domagoso, who fares well, occupying the No. 2 in pre-election surveys for President and Vice President, has repeatedly refused to say if he is running for higher office.
On the otherhand, Pacquiao and Gordon hinted that they would run for President.
Lacson noted she respected her decision to resist my suggestion and “whatever reasons she has for declining.”
While there could be some complications attendant to Robredo’s suggestion, Lacson said it was a sincere and selfless offer in support of her equally sincere efforts to have one common candidate against whoever will be the administration’s bet.
Meanwhile, Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate urged the opposition, critics of the administration and independent media to stay more vigilant against troll and hacking attacks on their websites, apps and even Facebook pages as more of these attacks are being documented against them.
“Just recently hackers or trolls ‘attacked’ Manila’s vaccination registration website 133 times the night before thousands trooped to vaccination sites in the capital city.
Last June, the registration app of the opposition coalition 1Sambayan was hacked.
Also last June, alternative media outlets Altermidya and Bulatlat.com were subjected to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that were traced to the Armed Forces of the Philippines as the perpetrators. Alongside this our website had also been subjected to similar attacks since the start of June,” he said.
“The bayanmuna.com.ph website had been under attack by trolls or hackers since early June up till the State-of-the-Nation Address on July 26. At first, they just launched a two-day attack, stop, then launch another two-day attacks. Then, it escalated into a full scale attack from June 24 to July 9, then again intensified in the run up to the SONA,” he added.
“The type of attack the hackers used is HTTP flooding which is similar to the DDoS attack used by the AFP against Bulatlat and Altermidya. In this type of attack, they would send overwhelmingly numerous requests to access your website that it would crash. In other words, ‘nadumog’ ang Bayan Muna website like what happened to the Manila Covax registration website,” he further stated.
According to Zarate, “as can be seen there seems to be a coordinated effort to attack the websites of groups and figures that expose the ineptness of the Duterte administration.”