THE senatorial candidates of the administration’s “Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas” will make one final push to try to secure their victory as the campaign period for the May 12 midterm elections enters its homestretch.
The Alyansa candidates will join President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the grand rally of Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia’s One Cebu party this morning at the Dumanjug Sports Complex.
Cebu, a traditional battleground during elections, has more than 3.7 million registered voters this year, getting the bulk of the more than 4.7 million voters of Central Visayas (Region 7).
It is not yet clear if all of the 11 Alyansa candidates will attend the event since Garcia has so far only endorsed nine of the 11 members of the administration’s ticket.
The governor has not endorsed the senatorial bids of re-electionist Sen. Lito Lapid and Rep. Erwin Tulfo (PL, ACT), who has been on top of recent surveys on senatorial preferences.
On Wednesday, the Alyansa slate will campaign in Malolos, Bulacan with local officials led by Mayor Christian Natividad.
The following day, the administration’s senatorial candidates will fly to Tacloban City, Leyte to attend a campaign rally led by Speaker Martin Romualdez, Tingog party-list and governors.
The Alyansa’s miting de avance will be held on Friday in Mandaluyong City, the bailiwick of former interior secretary and mayor Benhur Abalos Jr., who has been lagging behind in surveys.
The other members of the administration ticket are Makati City Mayor Abby Binay; reelectionist Senators Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., Pia Cayetano, and Francis “Tol” Tolentino; former senators Panfilo Lacson, Vicente Sotto III, and Manny Pacquiao; and Las Piñas Rep. Camille Villar, whose name the President skipped when he campaigned for the Alyansa in Batangas last Saturday.
Villar, daughter of Sen. Cynthia Villar and former Senate President Manuel Villar, has been drawing flak after receiving the endorsement of Vice President Sara Duterte despite having joined the administration coalition.
Duterte has been at loggerheads with the administration ever since she broke away from her alliance with Marcos in June last year.
Looking back at the past three months of the campaign period, Lacson said he realized that there is a need to revisit and review the Free Tertiary Education Act of 2017 to make it more accessible, especially to poor students.
He said that during the campaign period, he discovered problems in the implementation of the law, particularly the Commission on Higher Education’s (CHED) requirement for parents of scholars to pay the tuition first and then wait for a rebate.
“As we went around the country during the 90-day campaign, we saw problems in the implementation of the law. One is the requirement for some parents to give advance payments and wait for the rebate. In some cases the CHED is delayed in paying the rebate. In other cases, the rebates do not come at all,” he said.
“This is wrong. The scholarship should be available and the parents should not be made to give advance payments. We should revisit this law in the Senate in the exercise of oversight,” he also said.
For his part, Pacquiao proposed the nationwide formation of Guardians Cooperatives as he rallied members of the Guardians Brotherhood in Tacloban City last Thursday to help in nation-building through “cooperativism.”
Pacquiao, a colonel in the Army Reserve and native of Mindanao, spoke before hundreds of Guardians, a military-rooted civic group founded in the 1970s, and urged the group to transform the strength of brotherhood “into a force for economic empowerment.”
The Guardians Brotherhood has grown into a civilian-military coalition with nearly a million members nationwide.
Pacquiao envisions the Guardians Cooperatives to “be vehicles for livelihood, dignity, and community-led growth – starting with those who’ve long stood on the frontlines of public service.”
“Hindi limos ang kailangan ng ating mga bayani kundi pagkakataon – at iyon ang binibigay ng kooperatiba (Our heroes don’t need alms but opportunities and that’s what cooperative will give),” Pacquiao said.
“Ito ang bagong laban – laban para sa hanapbuhay, laban para sa kinabukasan ng pamilya ng Guardians (This is the new fight, a fight for livelihood, a fight got the families of Guardians).”
Under Pacquiao’s proposal, these cooperatives will be registered and supported through a legislative agenda that includes the Cooperative Empowerment Act – a bill he vows to champion in the Senate. The measure will ensure access to seed funding, training, and credit lines for qualified civic and military-affiliated organizations.
