Trillanes to Cayetano, Marcos: Make up your minds

MANILA, Philippines - Two members of the Nacionalista Party (NP) with plans of running for president or vice president should make up their minds now so the party can chart its next move ahead of the 2016 polls, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV said yesterday.

Trillanes was referring to Sens. Alan Peter Cayetano and Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who have made known their intentions to run for higher office in next year’s elections.

The two have also been mentioned as possible vice presidential candidates of the Liberal Party’s Manuel Roxas II and the United Nationalist Alliance’s standard-bearer Vice President Jejomar Binay.

Interviewed over dwIZ radio yesterday, Trillanes revealed that the NP met last Wednesday after Sen. Grace Poe’s declaration of her presidential bid, but was unable to decide on what role to play in the elections because of the indecisiveness of Cayetano and Marcos.

“At this point in time, the political alignments are intensifying and a lot of members of NP want to be able to position themselves already. So they will have to make up their minds soon,” Trillanes said.

“It’s also unfair to our partymates. At some point in time they will have to take that leap. There is no such thing as a sure thing in life,” he added.

Trillanes, who announced his decision to run for president several months back, said his two colleagues should not worry too much about their chances of winning and instead should make a decision once and for all whether to run for president or vice president.

Trillanes eventually decided to settle for the vice presidency.

Trillanes recalled that when he first ran for senator in 2007, he only had three percent of the votes in the surveys and ranked 56th among the candidates.

In spite of his poor showing in the surveys and being in detention, Trillanes managed to win a seat in the Senate.

“Do you want to serve as vice president or president of the country? I wouldn’t worry about these things too much. If you lose, you lose. There’s nothing you can do about it,” Trillanes said.

He said the NP is set to meet again in the next two weeks and by that time Cayetano and Marcos should have already made a decision.

If the two end up going with either Roxas or Binay, Trillanes said that he would work on getting the other NP members to back Poe as president.