Gloria Arroyo, LP may end up backing Binay

LUCENA CITY, Philippines—Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo may just end up supporting the presidential candidacy of Vice President Jejomar Binay in 2016, according to one of her closest allies.

Danilo Suarez, a former Quezon congressman, said Arroyo was grateful to Binay for the sympathy he has shown her and his call for the Aquino administration to place the sick former President under house arrest.

“That gratefulness might turn into a political decision,” said Suarez, a frequent visitor at Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC) where Arroyo is under hospital arrest.

The former President, who is facing plunder for allegedly misusing government charity funds, is confined at VMMC, as she has been reported to suffer from a degenerative bone disease.

Arroyo, who is now a Pampanga representative, has asked the court to transfer her place of detention from the VMMC to her residence in La Vista, Quezon City, but government lawyers have opposed her plea.

Suarez said that if the former President were to give the marching orders to her allies to support Binay, “it’s not just her but the whole political machinery of Lakas will support the Vice President.”

He said Lakas, the ruling political party during the Arroyo administration, has still more than 1,000 party members occupying different local positions across the country.

He said Lakas has recently been receiving feelers from former partymates who had transferred to other parties like the Nacionalista Party, Nationalist People’s Coalition and Liberal Party (LP) “about wanting to return to their old party.”

When asked to explain why former Lakas members who transferred to the LP after the election of President Aquino would leave the administration barely a year before the election, Suarez said: “Because the original LP members (who were) defeated in the last election would again run against the Lakas-turned-LP politicians.”

“The LP would surely support the original party man,” Suarez said.

Suarez, a former LP member himself, said the administration party has no equity of the incumbent policy.

He said the Suarez political clan in Quezon province would campaign for Binay in 2016.

Suarez’s youngest son, David, is the Quezon governor. His wife, Aleta, represents the province’s third district in the House of Representatives.