NPC dangles support to Poe-Escudero tandem

Senator Grace Poe and Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA

The Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) Acting President Giorgidi Aggabao said the party is only waiting for the declaration of Senators Grace Poe and Francis “Chiz” Escudero before it formally supports them for the 2016 elections.

In a press conference Tuesday, Deputy Speaker Aggabao clarified that the party has yet to meet to formally declare its support for a Poe-Escudero tandem.

He said though that the party is willing to adopt the two as independent candidates.

“The NPC, informally anyway, will be supporting the presidency aspiration of Senator Grace Poe and Senator Chiz Escudero for vice president, if and when they do declare their aspiration for higher public office,” Aggabao said.

READ: NPC may field Poe-Escudero team

“We will support them. We will use the entire apparatus, infrastructure of the party to announce the candidacy of both. But they would be acting as independent,” he said.

Aggabao said his sources have said the presidency and vice presidency bid of Poe and Escudero is already fixed for the 2016 elections.

But Aggabao said he has yet to talk with Poe and Escudero about it.

“Let me stress that I have not spoken to her personally and asked her… But from what I’ve been told, it is immutable: Grace Poe would be running for President (and Chiz) for Vice President,” Aggabao said.

Aggabao said it is only inevitable that the NPC would have a falling out with the administration coalition at least insofar as the support for a candidate is concerned.

Aggabao said Poe is the best candidate for president because she has more popularity and less “political baggage.”

“If you juxtapose her assets and liabilities, nakikita namin that it’s all political surplus,” Aggabao said of the adopted daughter of the late action star Fernando Poe Jr., and who led the two latest voters preference polls surpassing even that of Vice President Jejomar Binay.

Aggabao added that the Poe-Escudero tandem would not only “improve” the reform agenda of the Aquino administration, but also “flourish” it.

READ: Aquino says he’s still ‘pining’ for Grace Poe

The NPC is pressuring Poe and Escudero to announce their candidacies following a series of failed negotiations between President Aquino and Poe and Escudero in a bid to convince them to run alongside Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, the Liberal Party’s anointed one who has fared poorly in the voters’ preference polls.

The NPC is the second largest political party in Congress next to the Liberal Party. It has some 50 members in Congress and 22 provincial governors. IDL