His upset loss to Jejomar Binay in the vice presidential race in 2010 still rankles Interior Secretary Mar Roxas to this day.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Roxas said in an exclusive interview with the Inquirer last week, describing his failed bid as the running mate of President Aquino under the banner of the Liberal Party (LP), then the main opposition party.
“I mean, first of all, it’s painful to lose [an election]. Regardless if you have a protest, it’s still painful,” he said.
“But it’s OK. The pain is relieved by the fact that I have a duty… to do. My duty is to do everything to put the country first above myself. That’s what we have been taught to do,” Roxas said.
Then widely perceived as a runaway winner of the second-highest post in the land, Roxas lost by some 720,000 votes.
Roxas’ camp filed an electoral protest against Binay, claiming that about 2.6 million of Roxas’ votes in the Central and Western Visayas regions—his political bailiwick—were not counted by the voting machines used in the country’s first-ever automated polls.
Case pending
The case is still pending in the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, an 11-member body composed of Supreme Court justices.
Then the acknowledged leader and standard-bearer of the LP, Roxas opted to step aside for Aquino in 2010 amid the growing clamor for the latter to run for President following the death of his mother, the late democracy icon and former President Corazon Aquino.
Now endorsed by Aquino to spearhead the LP-led ruling coalition in next year’s presidential race, Roxas believes the gains of the Aquino administration would help him overcome every obstacle on his way to Malacañang.
He has also found confidence in the support of individuals and civil society organizations that have championed Aquino’s good governance platform of “daang matuwid” (straight path).
“We’re gonna win this battle,” Roxas emphatically declared at the gathering of the Koalisyon ng mga Mamamayan para sa Reporma in Davao City on Aug. 15.
“This is not going to be easy. This is going to be a continuous, hard path… The hardest battles are the ones that are worth fighting because we are fighting for what is good and right for the [country],” he said.
Worth fighting for
“I’m happy to have you with me in my foxhole. When the enemy comes, I’d much rather that we are together in our foxhole fighting the enemy of the straight path because [we] made it what it is now… Not only is the Filipino worth dying for, the Filipino is worth fighting for.”
Despite the advantages of an administration-backed presidential candidate, the interior secretary refuses to treat as a return bout his much-anticipated match-up with Binay, the standard-bearer of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance party.
For Roxas, the central story of the next year’s presidential elections should not be about the personalities.
Rather, Roxas said it should focus on the continuity of what he called unprecedented successes in instituting reforms to fight corruption in the bureaucracy and unparalleled economic growth via the President’s straight path advocacy.
Asked if he believed the next year’s elections would be a rematch between himself and Binay, Roxas said, “I think it’s entirely different.”
He said his loss to Binay in 2010 had made him realize a few important points.
Taking time
“I don’t know it all, I think that’s important,” he replied, when asked what were the biggest lessons from his unsuccessful vice presidential run.
“Second, now I understand more that… when you go after big changes, big reforms or big transformations, then you have to take time to explain and build consensus. Because even if you have plotted your destination, you won’t reach it if you fail to explain [it to the people].”
As for dropping his electoral case against Binay, Roxas said it would be “just a matter of law that if you file a candidacy for something else, it’s extinguished.”–Marlon Ramos