Binay welcomes Duterte entry

The camp of Vice President Jejomar Binay on Friday welcomed Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte to the presidential race, saying the more choices the voters have, the better.

After months of dithering about running for Malacañang, Duterte finally filed his certificate of candidacy for President in the Commission on Elections on Friday through his lawyer Salvador Medialdea.

“The Vice President welcomes the entry of Mayor Duterte [to] the presidential race. The people should be afforded more choices in 2016,” Joey Salgado, head of the media affairs of the Office of the Vice President, said in a statement issued on Friday.

‘Moral issues’

But Salgado noted that the new President is facing “moral issues” of poverty, hunger and unemployment that need to be decisively dealt with.

“Under Vice President Binay’s leadership as city mayor, Makati succeeded in reducing poverty from 1.6 percent in 2009 to 0.05 percent in 2012. He walks the talk, and has proven his executive ability and compassion for the poor,” Salgado said.

“This is what Vice President Binay offers to the people,” Salgado said.

Binay once asked the tough-talking Duterte to be his running mate, saying Duterte was a “successful mayor.”

But Binay’s voter support has been diminishing in recent months, eroded by a raft of corruption charges aired mostly in a long-running Senate investigation into alleged overpricing of infrastructure projects during his three terms as mayor of Makati City.

After dominating the field for months, he now ranks second behind Sen. Grace Poe in the latest Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia surveys.