Binay woos Iglesia ni Cristo vote

Vice President Jejomar Binay on Thursday went to woo the influential  Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) to his side, meeting with INC Executive Minister Eduardo Manalo.

Binay’s communication director Joey Salgado confirmed a report of the religious sect’s Eagle News that the vice president went to see Manalo.

“The Vice President is humbled by the opportunity extended by INC executive director Ka Eduardo Manalo to discuss his programs to lift the poor from poverty and build a compassionate, caring and competent government,” Salgado said in a statement.

Binay is the third presidential candidate to meet with Manalo after  Sen.  Grace Poe and former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas.

During elections, candidates seek the endorsement of the influential INC which has been known to vote as a bloc.

Confident

Meanwhile, Binay has expressed confidence he would win the presidency despite lagging behind two of his rivals in the surveys.

“I will win in the coming elections because what I am experiencing now was the same thing in 2010,” Binay said on Wednesday over radio, recalling his mood in the run-up to his come-from-behind victory in the vice presidential race.

Back in 2010, people who were not interviewed in the vice presidential surveys voted for him, he said.

“So watch out. For sure, I will win and my advantage will be by 7 to 10 percent,” said the standard-bearer of the United Nationalist Alliance party.

In recent  surveys by the Social Weather Station and Pulse Asia, Binay lagged behind Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and Poe.

Binay said he did not even bother to check the recent survey results. Reiterating his misgivings about them, he claimed that other surveys were being done to make it appear certain candidates were on top of the race.

“The most accurate survey is the result of the elections,” he said.

Commenting on some supporters’ vow to stand by  Duterte despite his controversial statements, Binay said he observed the opposite on the campaign trail.

Many people were now “shaking their heads” when they found out the true character of the tough-talking mayor, he said.

He said that those supporting Duterte probably “owe some kind of gratitude to him or are involved in killings.”

Binay has been campaigning for a week now with a warning not to vote for Duterte who he said was an executioner of children and the poor.

Deliver promises first

Binay also did not talk kindly about Poe when he compared their similar platforms to  uplift the lives of the poor.

He claimed that while Poe has yet to deliver on her promises, he has done much for the poor in his long experience as an administrator and an executive.

“It cannot be that you slept in America, when you return [home], you want to be president,” Binay said in an apparent dig at Poe, who spent much of her life in the United States but was declared eligible to run for President by the Supreme Court.

He said Poe lacked experience in government.

“It cannot be that once elected [in office], your work will be an on-the-job training. There is no time for that. There are 104 million Filipinos who are relying on the president’s governance,” he said.