Kapatiran’s De los Reyes out to slay political dynasties

OLONGAPO CITY—John Carlos “JC” de los Reyes is out to slay the “monster of political dynasties.”

In his campaign for a Senate seat, launched Tuesday in Olongapo City where he was once a councilor, De los Reyes announced he was taking on the administration Team PNoy and the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) for “fielding candidates from the same families who have been in power for such a long time.”

“They epitomize transactional politics, the politics of greed and of hypocrisy,” said De los Reyes, head of the Church-backed Ang Kapatiran who launched an unsuccessful drive for the presidency in the 2010 balloting.

At the start of the senatorial campaign season, De los Reyes heard Mass, hosted a radio program and met with his supporters.

He said that if the administration’s tuwid na daan slogan meant “pushing for the abolition of pork barrel, of passing the freedom of information bill and removing dynasties in government, then it would mean something.”

“They could do big things,” he said. Unfortunately, he said, this was not the case.

This is why Ang Kapatiran is joining the political fray, De los Reyes said, and why he is going against the patriarch of his own clan, Richard Gordon, an UNA senatorial candidate. Gordon is the brother of his mother Barbara.

De los Reyes said Ang Kapatiran’s senatorial candidates would hold a proclamation rally on Friday at the Archdiocese of Lipa in Batangas province.—Reports from Robert Gonzaga and Carmela Reyes-Estrope