Interior Secretary Mar Roxas: Waiting. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
The administration’s candidate for President is in no hurry to find a mate—a running mate.
Like a persistent suitor, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas on Thursday expressed willingness to wait for Sen. Grace Poe to decide whether or not to accept his “proposal” to be his running mate for the May 2016 elections.
Roxas, however, maintained that he and his colleagues in the ruling Liberal Party (LP) and its coalition partners were not without other prospects.
“There’s a deadline [for the filing of candidacies], right? That’s in October. I think the right time will come, we cannot rush it,” Roxas told reporters after addressing an assembly of the League of Provinces of the Philippines in Pasig City.
He said he respected Poe’s decision to wait until October to make her plans known.
Asked if the LP had a “Plan B” in case Poe spurned him, Roxas answered: “[There’s a plan] C, D, E and F.”
When asked what the other plans were, he laughed: “Why would I tell you that?”
Roxas then sought to curb the media’s enthusiasm about the elections which are nine months away.
“One day, one week, one month before that or near that is not material,” he said. “Let’s not look at it play by play, who talked to whom or what were the agreements made,” he added, referring to the political intramurals.
“What’s at stake here are the dreams of 100 million Filipinos. For me, that’s the more important thing. We should be concerned on how to maintain our [global] competitiveness and how to keep the foundations we have set to make our youth more competitive in the generations to come.”
Roxas then reiterated that his running mate should be a true believer in President Aquino’s “straight path,” which is the centerpiece of his administration.
“As I have said, the straight path is not about Mar Roxas, President Aquino or any other individual… it’s our way to a better future,” he said.
“Now we have what we call a proof of concept,” he added.
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