PRESIDENTIAL candidate Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson yesterday said he has asked his more than 700,000 volunteers nationwide to reach out to people in remote places and convince them that their votes will not be wasted if they choose him as the country’s next president.
Lacson said he made the appeal in a last-ditch effort to sway people to vote for him as pre-election polls showed that he was consistently preferred by only two percent of survey respondents.
“Last week I issued an order in our group chat, because our LSSG (Lacson-Sotto Support Group) has a group chat, I told them go to the remote corners of the country, convince people that their votes will not be wasted on me,” Lacson said in a mix of English and Filipino in a press conference in Dumaguete City where he campaigned yesterday.
Lacson has consistently ranked 5th among the 10 presidential candidates, with voter preference ranging from two to four percent. He has repeatedly said he does not believe the survey numbers because of the warm reception that he and his vice presidential running mate Senate President Vicente Sotto III have been getting during their townhall meetings.
Lacson said that his volunteers have so far reported to him that they have converted a good number of voters in his favor, especially in areas which are not reached by other candidates or their volunteers.
Lacson found it impossible that he got “zero” in the Visayas and Mindanao regions in the latest Pulse Asia survey conducted April 16 to 21 where presidential candidate former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and running mate Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio are still leading the race if the elections were held on the date of the survey.
He said he is wondering why he got zero voter preference in the two regions in the said survey when he got more than 16 million votes when he ran for senator in the 2016 elections, not to mention that he has a number of coordinators and volunteers in these two regions.
“I don’t want to question the integrity of the survey firm but I cannot believe that I am worth 2 percent… Minsan nakaka-discourage (It is sometimes discouraging) but we will not stop,” he added. Lacson said his poor ratings in pre-election surveys may have been due to their “late” use of social media platforms in their campaign strategy, unlike the camp of Marcos Jr. who he said made use of social media sites as early as 2016 “probably to launch his presidential run in 2022.”
He said Vice President Leni Robredo also made use of the social media by “projecting” huge crowd turnouts during her campaign sorties.
He admitted that his camp’s late use of social media platforms was one of their “failures” during the campaign period.
“Medyo late na siguro, hindi targeted ‘yung efforts because we are practically new in this mode of campaigning and ‘yun ang nakita ko. That’s my personal opinion na mukhang may shortcoming doon sa social media effort, that’s a lesson learned to be applied (I think we are little bit late and our efforts are not targeted because we are practically new in this mode of campaigning and that’s what I have seen. That’s my personal opinion that it seems there is a shortcoming in our social media effort, that’s a lesson learned to be applied),” Lacson said.
On the endorsement of the Iglesia ni Cristo, he said it would boost anyone’s candidacy but it does not guarantee victory of the candidate.
Lacson made the remark after the INC endorsed the candidacies of Marcos Jr. and Duterte-Carpio.
“That will be respected because that’s their decision. They are supposed to vote as one, as a bloc, but it is not, hindi naman automatic na kung sino ang in-endorse ay siyang mananalo na because it has happened before, ‘yung endorsed hindi nanalo, ‘yung hindi in-endorse ay nanalo (We will respect that because that’s their decision. They are supposed to vote as one, as a bloc, but it is not, it is not a guarantee that anyone who will be endorsed by the religious sect will win because it has happened before — the endorsed did not win, while the one not endorsed won),” he said.
