There’s no longer any doubt that Sen. Grace Poe is the people’s darling. Nor is there any more doubt in her mind that she can be president or vice president in 2016.
What a position to be in. Every political party wants her on its 2016 ticket. It’s heady days for Ms. Poe.
But could all the attention and wooing she’s been receiving be getting into her head?
She has the self-assurance of someone who’s now in the lead in the presidential derby.
“Why are they afraid of me?” she recently asked rhetorically after Vice President Jojo Binay’s noisemakers started to give her a hard time over her citizenship and the residency requirement for a candidate for president or vice president. The question had the ring of confidence so that her potential opponents, or at least one of them, Binay, are now worried about her potential vote-getting power.
Unfortunately for the Binay camp, their dirty tactics boomeranged, forcing them to backtrack. One of Binay’s daughters disowned the spokesman who questioned Poe’s citizenship and residency qualification. Veep Binay himself said he didn’t authorize the spokesman’s tactics.
Which proves that even the combative Binay family has realized the futility of any frontal attacks against Poe. They now have to tread gingerly when they attack her.
And that hasn’t escaped Poe’s assessment of how she’s gaining ground in the 2016 derby. Which adds to her self-confidence that she’s turning out to be the leading candidate now. (Indeed the latest survey has Poe as the leading choice, overtaking Binay who, for the past two years, had been the survey leader.)
Saying that she doesn’t want to be beholden to any political personality or party, Poe prefers to run as an independent (she doesn’t belong to any party). The problem is she will need a party machinery and grassroots support which an established party can command.
So she wants to remain an independent but she also has floated the idea of being backed by a coalition. What’s the difference? Isn’t that the same as running under a party? Wouldn’t she be beholden to the coalition members? She wants to have her cake and eat it.
Incidentally, Poe’s Senate chum Chiz Escudero has denied helping to cause Mar Roxas’ defeat in 2010 by floating the idea of a Noy-Bi (Noynoy Aquino and Jojo Binay) over the Noy-Mar (Aquino and Roxas) presidential tandem in 2010. Aquino won but Roxas lost. (In the Philippines the president and the vice president can be elected separately.)
Now that Escudero is being blamed for being disloyal to the Noy-Mar tandem in 2010, he says that his was only one vote and that couldn’t have made a difference in the veep contest between Roxas and Binay.
If Escudero had voted quietly for Noy-Bi in the voting booth, his statement would be true. But he publicly touted the Noy-Bi alternative tandem. So he did campaign for Noy-Bi, sabotaging the Noy-Mar team.
Other friends, family and followers of Aquino were prominently reported in 2010 to have supported Noy-Bi. So Escudero cannot now claim that he had only one vote and that he didn’t campaign for Noy-Bi.
Look what that double-crossing spawned. It helped place into prominence Binay, where he has been until recently in a position as the presidential front-runner for 2016. Lucky for the country his survey ratings have been steadily dropping over the past several months because of allegations of amassing illegal wealth over the years as mayor of tax-rich Makati City.
If Poe and Escudero decide to run as a tandem in 2016, they will have to make compromises (and promises?) in order to benefit from a party machinery, grassroots support, and billion-peso campaign funding. Life, including and especially politics, is full of compromises.
Poe says she doesn’t want to be beholden to anyone. What nonsense. No presidential candidate can ever win without being beholden to coalition partners as well as big-money contributors.
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