Worse than drought ROXAS PRESIDENTIAL RUN: BINAY’S COVETED DREAM

By Manny Piñol

Interior Secretary Manuel A. Roxas III has told his Liberal Party-mates over the weekend that he is interested in running for President in 2016.

Senate President Franklin Drilon confirmed this in an interview with Inquirer Radio.

A report which came out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer said:

“As of now, Mar Roxas has expressed interest internally that he wants to offer his candidacy to the public, and the party will probably endorse that. So as of now, it’s Mar Roxas,” Drilon told host Jake Maderazo.

“Drilon, the LP’s vice president, said he does not know yet who the party is considering for its standard-bearer’s vice-presidential running mate.

“He said the LP would be calling a convention to decide on its candidates for the top posts in the 2016 elections, though no date has been set yet.

“Party members have long been saying that Roxas, who ran unsuccessfully for vice president in 2010, was the party’s presumptive standard-bearer.

“President Aquino, the party’s titular head, is expected to announce his preferred successor in June.”

This news will be a welcome development for Vice President Jejomar Binay and his cohorts because they all know that a rematch against Roxas, this time for the Presidency, would give Binay an easy win.

The writings on the wall are very clear for all to see, except perhaps the die-hard Roxas supporters and they say: Mar Roxas cannot win over Jejomar Binay.

That is in spite of the fact that Binay is facing serious corruption and plunder charges.

Scary?

Well, that’s the truth and President Aquino and the top leaders of the Liberal Party should tell Mar Roxas to abandon his desire to become President because 2016 is not his time!

The hard-sell pitch that Roxas is better than Binay because Mar is honest, decent and clean as a public official will not change the public’s negative view of the Interior Secretary.

Why has Mar Roxas turned from a fair-haired presidential prospect when he first appeared in the Philippine political scene a few years ago to a loathed political figure that he is now?

Roxas has departed from the very likeable persona he projected when he first made a bid for the Senate and presented himself as the common people’s “Mr. Palengke.”

That was the height of Roxas’ popularity but instead of preserving that, he squandered it by showing the face of an ill-tempered bureaucrat who had no respect for other people’s sensibilities and sensitivities.

Roxas made people felt like the whole country should thank him for making the ultimate sacrifice of serving in government.

All the belated efforts to reverse that including the ridiculous photos of him manning the traffic while he was drenched by the rain, carrying a sackful of confiscated rice, pedalling a trisikad and the video of him speaking in a hushed voice while comforting the kin of one of the Fallen 44 in Baguio City were all in vain.

What was imprinted in the mind of the people was the Mar Roxas who berated the Tacloban City Mayor and reminded him of the political realities in the country while thousands of victims of Typhoon Yolanda were living in tents.

What people remember was the image of a clumsy motorcycle rider who was not wearing a helmet falling from a Honda XRM usually driven by young girls with ease.

What people who worked with him feel bad about is Mar Roxas’ propensity to bawl out at others in public without showing any degree of respect for their position or age.

Mar Roxas has simply lost his “connect” with the masses, especially those who worked very closely with him.

This is the very reason why his announcement that he is interested to run for President and the possibility that President Aquino and the Liberal Party would endorse him come like a drop of rain in a long drought suffered by Vice President Binay.

The greatest disservice that President Aquino and the Liberal Party could inflict on this hapless country would be to force a Mar Roxas Presidential candidacy and ignore the writings on the wall.

A 6-year Binay Presidency could be the worse than a long drought.

It would be tantamount to throwing the whole nation into a limbo, a labyrinth where the Filipinos will no longer be able to find their way back to decency in governance and righteous values.