Drilon: No need for LP meet to proclaim Roxas

Senate President Franklin Drilon. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / JOAN BONDOC

With Interior Secretary Mar Roxas the only party member signifying any interest in running for President, there will be no need for the Liberal Party (LP) to hold a convention to choose its standard-bearer, according to Senate President Franklin Drilon.

Drilon, the LP’s vice chair, said nobody has contested Roxas’ status as the party’s presumptive standard-bearer. What needs to be discussed is who will be on the party’s senatorial slate, he said.

“There is a convention mentioned in our laws, but given the reality that only Secretary Roxas has expressed an intention to run for the presidency, I don’t see any need for a convention,” Drilon told a forum at the Luneta Hotel.

Only when another LP member says that he or she also wants to run for president will there be a need for the party to convene, he said.

Roxas himself has yet to declare that he would seek the presidency, but in an earlier interview, Drilon disclosed that Roxas was interested in becoming the party’s standard-bearer.

President Aquino, the LP’s titular head, is expected to announce his anointed one after he delivers his last State of the Nation Address on July 27.

In the meantime, the President has met with Sen. Grace Poe and is scheduled to meet with Sen. Francis Escudero, two senators who do not belong to any political party.

Poe, who has emerged as a contender in the presidential preference surveys, is being urged by her supporters to run for President. There are LP members who want Poe to be the Roxas’ vice presidential running mate.

But Poe has said she would be “comfortable” teaming up with Escudero. Neither Poe nor Escudero has made a final decision on whether or not to run in 2016.

Drilon said Aquino “is entitled to throw a wider net.”

“The President is not only the chair of the Liberal Party, he is also the President of the country. He had a platform when he came into power, and that is the platform of good governance, and it is natural for him to look for candidates who in his judgment can continue the platform and principles on which he has governed the country for the last five years,” he said.