Senators Loren Legarda and Alan Peter Cayetano. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
DAVAO CITY — What’s the big fuss over two supposedly warring candidates on the Team PNoy senatorial slate?
Liberal Party members are playing down a reported rift between reelectionist Senators Loren Legarda and Alan Peter Cayetano who belong to different parties but are running on the administration’s Team PNoy coalition ticket.
LP vice president for external affairs Senator Francis Pangilinan and Team PNoy Senate bet Bam Aquino said quarrels, whether among rivals or group mates, are typical during an election campaign.
What matters more is that the Team PNoy Senate slate composed of candidates from allied parties make it to the incoming 16th Congress and sustain Malacanang’s efforts at good governance, they said.
“Something like that has happened before. This is not unusual to have disagreements in any coalition, on any ticket,” Pangilinan said in an interview Tuesday night on the sidelines of the “Rock the Vote” concert organized by groups who supported President Aquino’s 2010 campaign.
The People Power Voters for Reform (PPVR) and the Yellow Ribbon Movement have organized a series of rock concerts nationwide to urge voters select good candidates and vote on May 13.
The concert organizers are openly endorsing the senatorial candidacies of Aquino, former Aklbayan Representative Risa Hontiveros and former Senator Ramon “Jun” Magsaysay.
“I wouldn’t put too much weight on it in terms of the overall effort to bring together… a working unity among the different members of the coalition for the agenda of the President,” Pangilinan added.
Legarda complained to the media last week that a fellow Team PNoy senatorial candidate had employed a publicist to conduct a smear campaign against her to dislodge her from the top post in nationwide preference surveys. The senator hinted that her rival was faring well in the surveys.
Legarda topped the senatorial elections in 1998 and 2007 but lost in two attempts to become Vice President in 2004 and 2010.
While Legarda has not publicly named the candidate behind alleged efforts to malign her, some news reports speculated she was alluding to Senator Alan peter Cayetano.
Legarda is a member of the Nationalist People’s Coalition while Cayetano belongs to the Nacionalista Party. Both groups are in coalition with the LP under Team PNoy.
Since the start of the campaign last Febrary, complaints about the LP’s supposed insistence on fielding its own candidates despite the presence of reelectionist candidates from the other parties have plagued the coalition.
Pangilinan said he did not think the supposed rift between Legarda and Cayetano, whom he did not name during the interview, put the entire Team PNoy in an awkward position. Instead, he expressed optimism that the supposedly warring candidates would be able to see beyond their personal differences and work together to sustain Malacañang’s legislative agenda for the 16th Congress.
“The challenge here is how to manage it and I think pretty much, it has not degenerated into a collapse of the coalition, and I don’t think it will. I consider this (incident) part of the challenges of coalition-building, particularly in the heat of the campaign.… We’re just going to have to factor that in and eventually smoothen the ruffled feathers. Maaayos din yan,” he said.
“I’d like to think there will be items on the national agenda where we would have to work together so we would take it on a case by case basis. In others words, I don’t think this incident would mean the collapse of the coalition after the elections,” Pangilinan added.
The senator and senatorial candidate Aquino separately stated they would not exert any effort to mediate in the alleged conflict.
“There is no need at this point, we’ll just have to focus on the elections and last-minute campaigning.…Will we be able to overcome this? I think so. We are talking of politicians who are aware that disagreements could occur… but in the end, I don’t think it will mean the end of this Team PNoy working unity,” Pangilinan said.
Both Pangilinan and Aquino expressed amusement when asked whether they would watch out for any close encounter between Legarda and Cayetano at Team PNoy’s miting de avance on Friday at the Amoranto stadium in Quezon City.
“I hope Loren can solve it in the soonest possible time, that black propaganda, because that also happened to me. You have to answer [the issues] as honestly as possible and let the people decide,” was Aquino’s unsolicited advice.