Rival presidential bets Mar Roxas and Rodrigo Duterte and Vice Presidential aspirant Antonio Trillanes. FILE PHOTOS
Malacañang is behind the demolition job against leading presidential candidate Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, his camp said on Saturday.
“(Senator Antonio) Trillanes is but a pawn. The brain behind is Malacañang,” Leoncio Evasco Jr., Duterte’s campaign manager said in a statement.
Evasco said Malacañang was “bent on thwarting a victory by Duterte.”
“It is desperately trying to save the candidacy of Mar Roxas and is poised to employ all means, including massive cheating, to maintain the status quo,” he said.
READ: Duterte camp: Administration in ‘panic mode’
The most recent Pulse Asia-ABS-CBN survey shows that Duterte continues to enjoy a wide lead as the poll frontrunner, while administration candidate Roxas lags in third place despite seeing a two-point increase in his stock.
READ: Duterte maintains lead in Pulse survey
“They made the election a very dirty political exercise. They want it confined among the elite. They cannot stomach an outsider, one who has captivated the imagination of the people but does not come from their ranks,” Evasco said.
The former rebel priest said both President Benigno Aquino III and Roxas ‘belong to the landed elite who only have contempt against the majority of Filipinos clamoring for genuine and real change.”
“During the watch of (Aquino) and Roxas, we saw how they remorselessly sacrificed the lives of our gallant police officers in Mamasapano,” Evasco said.
He also cited the Kidapawan incident, which killed at least three protesting farmers asking for government aide amid the massive drought.
“When hungry farmers demanded rice because the severe drought is killing their children, they answered back by firing at the protesters and in the process killing 3 and wounding scores of others. It was an exercise of brutal state euthanasia,” he said.
READ: Duterte camp on Kidapawan dispersal: Blood on Aquino’s hands
Evasco said they have been expecting black propaganda to become “more vicious and intense as Duterte began to rise in the surveys.”
Trillanes, who earlier claimed that he was supporting the candidacy of Senator Grace Poe, said that the tough-talking mayor has over P200 million in his Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) account on Julia Vargas branch in Pasig City.
But despite the series of attacks against Duterte, Evasco said people continue to rally behind the mayor.
“For the first time, people have rallied behind a man – a leader – who is giving them hope,” he said.
He said this was bringing “fear into the senses of the Aquino government and their minions.”
That is the reason, he said, why they unleashed Trillanes who he called as “a failed putschist and a reckless mercenary of the Aquino government.” IDL