BUSAN - President Benigno Aquino III will not impose his will on members of the administration coalition with regard to the candidate that they will field in the 2016 presidential elections.
Aquino said the choice of candidates would be dependent on consultations among the political allies of the administration.
“I am the very first person who does not dictate. I will go for the consensus of our allies,” the President told reporters at the sidelines of the Republic of Korea – ASEAN Commemorative Summit last Friday.
“At the end of the day, they are the ones who will campaign on the grassroots. In fact, I am about to retire while they remain in the system and they have more at stake in a sense than I have,” he added.
Aquino said his voice “should be even less of a value” than the consensus they are trying to achieve.
“It should not be ‘I’ but ‘we’ because we are a coalition,” he said.
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. had said that Aquino would have a 99.99 percent sway on the administration coalition’s choice of presidential bet.
Belmont believes that whoever would be chosen by Aquino – whether from the Liberal Party or from other parties who belong to the coalition – will win.
Interior and Local Government Secretary Manuel Roxas II, who dropped his presidential bid in 2010 to give way to Aquino, remains the presumptive standard bearer of the Liberal Party.
Meanwhile, Aquino downplayed a recent Pulse Asia survey that showed Roxas suffering from a decline in voters’ preference.
He said nobody would place their bets based on the results of the survey, which was conducted between November 14 and 20.
“Perhaps the most important is the last survey to be conducted before the campaign,” Aquino said in Filipino.
“We are not talking specifically of Secretary Roxas but the bottom line I we think the political processes can be further nurtured if we shift from being a party of personalities to a party of issues,” he added.
When asked whether Sen. Grace Poe, who is enjoying a rise in voter preference ratings, could be fielded as a presidential bet, Aquino merely noted that she ran under the administration ticket in 2013.
Last month’s Pulse Asia poll on possible presidential candidates showed Poe ranking second behind Vice President Jejomar Binay, who has seen a drop in his ratings after being tagged in allegedly overpriced projects.
Binay was picked by 26 percent of the 1,200 respondents, down from 31 percent in September, while Poe soared to 18 percent from 10 percent.
Roxas ranked sixth behind Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Manila Mayor and former president Joseph Estrada and Sen. Francis Escudero. The Interior and Local Government Secretary’s score went down to six percent from 13 percent.