No split in coalition if Roxas, Poe join presidential race
Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Senator Grace Poe. FILE PHOTOS
There will be no break up in the administration coalition even if Senator Grace Poe and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas run against each other in 2016, Senate President Franklin Drilon said on Thursday.
Poe ran and won a Senate seat for the first time in 2013 under the administration coalition ticket led by Liberal Party (LP), which is now rooting for Roxas to be its standard-bearer next year.
“I do not know where the breakup is coming from; there is no such thing,” Drilon, vice chairman of LP, said during a regular weekly forum at the Senate.
This came amid the reported talks of an alliance between the Nacionalista Party (NP) and the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) supposedly to back the possible run of Poe and Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero for president and vice president, respectively.
READ: NP, NPC go for Poe-Escudero
But NP members — Senators Cynthia Villar and Antonio Trillanes IV — immediately denied there was such an alliance.
Both NP and NPC are members of the coalition, along with the Akbayan Partylist Group and the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino.
Asked if the coalition would be divided if both Poe and Roxas run against each other next year, Drilon said, “Hindi mahahati because the President is the leader of the coalition.”
“We always want to preserve our coalition that brought the President into power in 2010 and brought nine of the 12 senators to the Senate in 2013,” he further said.
Drilon later acknowledged that the LP has no control over other coalition partners and that they have yet to convince them to support the candidate that President Benigno Aquino III will endorse next week.
“We have to discuss with our coalition partners. They are not under our supervision and control. We impose party discipline on the Liberal Party, but we have to convince our coalition partner on the candidate that will be anointed by the President,” he said.
The Senate leader also admitted that there was no commitment that the coalition would continue until next elections.
“There is no commitment from the coalition parties. We have not discussed that but it is our desire to preserve the coalition. It is the President’s desire to preserve that coalition but the matter of staying in the coalition is a decision by our coalition partners,” he further said.
