UNA wants to open campaign in vote-rich Cebu

Former Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The United Nationalist Alliance’s (UNA) journey to the 2013 senatorial election will officially begin at the “doorstep” of an embattled political rally.

UNA senatorial candidates are planning to jump-start their campaign on Feb. 12 with a massive proclamation rally in Cebu province where the governor, Gwendolyn Garcia, is still resisting a suspension order issued by President Benigno Aquino III.

Aquino is leading the campaign for the senatorial aspirants belonging to the Liberal Party-Nacionalista Party-Nationalist People’s Coalition alliance. The administration slate’s proclamation rally is tentatively set in Manila.

“Governor Garcia, for whatever reason, is perceived as being harassed so she needs all the moral support she can get and that’s why we are holding the proclamation rally at her doorstep,” former Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri, an UNA candidate, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone.

Vice President Jejomar Binay, one of the three senior UNA leaders, personally picked Cebu “to show support for UNA candidates there,” said Zubiri.

“The message is that we are supporting our local candidates,” he added.

But the Garcia family is no ordinary ally. They control the vote-rich province of Cebu, which was credited with delivering the crucial margin of victory in 2004 to then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Cebu registered a voting population of more than two million people during the 2010 elections.

The other proposed venue for the proclamation rally is Tondo, Manila, a known bailiwick of former President Joseph Estrada. Zubiri said the plan now is to hold another big campaign sortie in the city on March 29, the start of the campaign period for local candidates.

The sortie will also kick off the mayoral bid of Estrada in Manila where he will square off with incumbent Mayor Alfredo Lim, his former interior secretary.

By Zubiri’s reckoning, Cebu was also a strategic choice for UNA. He said its candidates had been “perceived as weak” in the Visayas during past elections, a fact that has been confirmed by the Estrada-Binay ticket in the 2010 presidential election.

Zubiri said the Cebu affair could include multiple campaign sorties in neighboring provinces such as Bohol and Negros.

Of UNA’s 12 candidates, Zubiri probably is closest to Cebu in terms of ethnic connections. He is from Bukidnon down south and he speaks Cebuano. “In that sense, I think the Cebu sortie would help me,” he said.

UNA candidates held a “preelection sortie” in Laguna, on Thursday. They met with local officials led by Gov. ER Ejercito, Estrada’s nephew.