THE Nacionalista Party and the Nationalist People’s Coalition have failed to forge an alliance to support NP standard-bearer Senator Manuel Villar and running mate Senator Loren Legarda of the NPC, because candidates of both parties at the local level are pitted against each other.
While more than 50 percent of NPC members have committed to support the Villar-Legarda tandem, the rest cannot yet commit to support Villar because they are competing against NP candidates in the elections for governor, mayor and other posts in various cities, towns and provinces, Legarda told the weekly Kapihan sa Senado yesterday.
“If NPC candidates are locked in a fight with opponents from the NP at the local level, then there is a problem. The NP and NPC cannot join forces,” the senator said.
But Legarda also downplayed the failure of her party to forge a coalition with the NP after she agreed to be the running mate of Villar.
“Because they have an incumbent candidate for vice president whom they are supporting 100 percent, more than half of the NPC is joining in the tandem,” Legarda said.
“It would not be entirely accurate to say that the coalition or merger of the two parties did not materialize. In the first place, [Villar] only requested that Loren be made his running mate,” she said.
According to Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco, son of business tycoon and NPC founder and chairman emeritus Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., the party has adopted a policy that members be given free hand in supporting a presidential candidate of their choice.
Legarda squelched the speculation that the NP-NPC coalition fizzled out because this did not sit well with Cojuangco Jr. Senator Benigno Aquino III of the Liberal Party and former Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, both Cojuangco Jr.’s nephews, are running for president.
She said Cojuangco was “semi-retired from the party and from party politics.” She said she last met the NPC patriarch shortly after Senator Francis Escudero resigned from the party last month.
The NP-NPC would field a common senatorial ticket that includes NPC stalwarts like former Senator Vicente Sotto III and Agusan del Sur Rep. Rodolfo Plaza, Legarda said, while Tourism Secretary Ace Durano was still undecided whether to pursue his senatorial plan.
