NPC to back only 3 bets in LP

MANILA, Philippines — Just how much support is the Liberal Party expecting for its entire senatorial slate this midterm elections from the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC)?

According to former Pangasinan Representative Mark Cojuangco, the political party’s provincial chairman, the NPC can only guarantee support for three and two of them will be from the NPC.

“Only two NPC senatorial bets, three including Chiz (Senator Francis Escudero), have a guarantee of our support,” Cojuangco told reporters at a press conference held by rice farmers.

Senator Loren Legarda is the lone NPC member out of the 12 LP candidates but Escudero had been part of the NPC before.

Cojuangco said they will announce which senatorial candidates they will back a month before the elections.

“We want to select the candidates we believe are good for [President Aquino’s] success. I don’t think all that he picked are good for his success,” he said, explaining that many NPC leaders thought that not all 12 senatorial bets under the ruling coalition were good.

“Some of them are good but not all,” said Cojuangco, the son of the President’s uncle, NPC founder and president emeritus Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco.

He also pointed to what he felt was a political harassment against NPC members as being one reason for the party’s limited support for the LP slate.

The NPC official was recently quoted in a Philippine Daily Inquirer report lambasting what he viewed as political harassment against NPC members Pangasinan Governor Amado Espino and Pangasinan Representative Jesus Celeste who are facing a murder case filed by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for the death of Infanta Mayor Ruperto Martinez.

“Hindi naman nila tinutupad ang usapan eh. Lahat ng local candidates namin kinakalaban nila, so ano ang ibig saabihin noon?” said Cojuangco.

(They did not honor their word. They are targeting all our local candidates, so what does that mean?)