Roxas is LP’s ‘2nd-best’ choice, Aquino still No. 1–Erice

(from left to right) President Benigno Aquino: “No. 1” and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas: “No. 2”. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

MANILA, Philippines–Interior Secretary Mar Roxas is only the “second-best choice” for the Liberal Party standard bearer in the 2016 presidential race, according to an administration lawmaker.

Second to President Aquino, that is.

Caloocan Rep. Edgar Erice said he considered Roxas as the next-best option to Aquino, the “best President we’ve ever had.”

“For continuity’s sake, I feel another term for the President is the best choice because he is a selfless leader who really inspires,” he said in a phone interview.

But he admitted that the proposal being floated to amend the Constitution in order to remove the ban on presidential reelection has not gained any traction.

“I just floated the idea. If the people do not approve of it, then I will submit,” Erice said.

The LP remained supportive of Roxas, the presumptive administration candidate in 2016 in spite of surveys showing him to be lagging behind Vice President Jejomar Binay and other candidates, the congressman said.

In a Pulse Asia survey conducted from June 24 to July 2, Roxas emerged as the choice for president of only 7 percent of the respondents, behind Binay’s 41 percent, Sen. Grace Poe’s 12 percent, and Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada’s 9 percent.

The President has yet to endorse any candidate, but most party members prefer Roxas, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said last June.

Talk of a possible Binay-Roxas ticket surfaced after Aquino’s sisters Ballsy Aquino-Cruz and Kris Aquino expressed openness to the idea of the administration party adopting the vice president as a guest candidate.

Erice, a known critic of Binay, admitted that some members of the LP might be having second thoughts about Roxas in light of this development.

“It’s possible there will be movements, but if there are people going, we have enough to fill the gaps… We have a deep bench,” he said.

But he made it clear that a coalition between the LP and Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) was “impossible.”

This was the same view of another LP leader, Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, who earlier said the two parties were headed for a “collision”—not a coalition–in 2016.

“Secretary Mar Roxas, who has not been implicated in any corruption issue in his entire career in government, stands out as the leading possible aspirant who can claim to have embraced and have committed to pursue the reform agenda of President Aquino,” he had said.

On the other hand, UNA secretary general Toby Tiangco said it was not Binay who was seeking the LP merger but a faction in the ruling party.

On this note, Erice said he did not understand why Binay would even need an endorsement from Aquino’s sisters or a coalition with the LP if he was so strong.

“Why is he afraid of Mar Roxas? Why is the 41 percent afraid of the 7 percent?” he said, alluding to recent survey results.

Answering his own question, Erice said it was because Roxas had a clean record, unlike Binay who was recently charged with plunder along with his son, Makati Mayor Junjun Binay, and other city officials in connection with the alleged overpricing of a parking building in Makati.