Duterte vs Binay in close fight

Supporters of Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte, who number by the millions and still counting, are cheering the acceptance of his filing of certificate of candidacy by the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

For a while they feared he could be disqualified because the PDP-Laban Party presidential bet, Martin Diño, who gave way to his candidacy, made the mistake of filling out a form for mayor of Pasay City instead of for President of the Republic.

It was a minor clerical error which would have canceled out Duterte’s chances as substitute candidate for Diño.

With Duterte now finally in the official list of presidential candidates, the other major candidates are the Liberal Party’s Mar Roxas, UNA’s Jejomar Binay, Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) Family Club’s Roy Señeres and the People’s Reform Party’s Miriam Defensor-Santiago.

The candidates to reckon with are Duterte, Roxas and Binay.

Duterte was ahead in the latest SWS survey with Sen. Grace Poe, an independent, running second.

Poe has since been disqualified by the Comelec’s two divisions.

Binay was third and Roxas, in the fourth place.

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The candidates’ standing in subsequent surveys may change according to how each of them presents himself to the voters in the coming months.

Duterte has incurred the ire of many Catholics because he cussed Pope Francis for the monstrous traffic jam in Metro Manila that ensued during his state visit to the county.

That issue has alienated him from most Catholics who think that the Pope is God himself.

Roxas, no matter what kind of image projected by his camp, just can’t connect with the masses.

On the other hand, although he’s been hounded by accusations that he plundered the coffers of Makati City when he was its mayor, Binay has a permanent constituency that blindly believes the charges against him are “politically motivated.”

Methinks that eventually, it will be a close fight between Duterte and Binay who are both men of the masses.

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Arnel Edem, a pastor of the Bible Baptist Church-Mission in Imus, Cavite province, is a disgrace to the clergy in general and to his church in particular.

Edem recanted his sworn statement that indirectly links four Imus policemen to the murder of Oscar Gali, a man who was mentally ill.

The pastor turned Gali over to a security guard of a village where Gali lived after he saw the man loitering in the premises of his church.

The security guard entrusted Gali to village officials who, in turn, handed him over to four Imus cops—SPO1 Danilo Paredes, PO3 Roberto dela Cruz, PO2 Roy Reyes and PO1 Jeffrey Amada—after Gali could not tell where his house was.

Six days later, Gali was found dead in the neighboring town of Kawit with four bullet wounds.

I called up Edem yesterday to ask why he had retracted his sworn statement.

I have a personal stake in Gali’s murder because my program, “Isumbong mo kay Tulfo,” was responsible for the filing of an administrative case against the four suspected policemen.

You know what Pastor Edem told me in reply to my question?

“It’s my personal decision and nobody can question it,” he said.

Edem told a lie when he retracted his sworn statement.

I thought a man of God like Edem was incapable of lying.