Tingting to Noy: I will continue to seek ARMM vice gov post

Manila, Philippines - Former Tarlac governor Margarita “Tingting” Cojuangco yesterday told her nephew, President Aquino, that she would continue to seek the vice gubernatorial post in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections.

Cojuangco also told Aquino that she is an independent thinker.

“I work with my husband, and I have my own qualifications to want to do what I want to do. I will not be curtailed. It’s not fair for me,” Cojuangco told reporters in yesterday’s PDP-Laban Breakfast Forum at Harbor View Restaurant in Manila.

Cojuangco reacted to Aquino’s earlier statement that he does not want his relatives around him.

The President has been pushing for the postponement of the ARMM elections, for what PDP-Laban sees as “unclear reasons.”

“With all due respect to the President,” Cojuangco said she made her decision to run for ARMM vice governor in consultations with former congressman Pax Pakung Mangudadatu.

Cojuangco recently left the Philippine Public Safety College (PPSC) as president, and insisted that she resigned amid persistent reports that Aquino had fired her due to her position on the ARMM elections.

She was appointed as PPSC president in 2003 by former president, now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Cojuangco said she talked to Aquino after she filed her certificate of candidacy. “I also told him that I have made the decision to participate in the elections in ARMM,” she said.

Cojuangco added that she informed the President that she has been advocating for the holding of the ARMM elections.

“Sorry, he is not advocating this election where he won. There are only two areas in Mindanao where Noynoy won – that is in the ARMM and Caraga regions. And I was telling him, please preserve the area, the bailiwick where you won,” she said.

Cojuangco will vie with 15 other candidates for ARMM vice governor.

Lawyer Aquilino Pimentel III, PDP-Laban president, yesterday presented Mangudadatu and Cojuangco as the party’s candidates for governor and vice governor, respectively, in the Aug. 8 ARMM polls.

Pimentel said Cojuangco has established residency in the ARMM since 1998, as she has a house in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao.

As to the point of Rep. Bai Sandra Sema that Cojuangco should not seek office in the ARMM because she is a non-Muslim, Pimentel said Mangudadatu’s being a former Muslim governor of the predominantly Christian Sultan Kudarat province should disprove her (Sema’s) notion.