TACLOBAN CITY—Vice presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. yesterday revealed an election “Plan B” allegedly concocted by the ruling Liberal Party (LP) to unseat Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte should he win the presidency and to install Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo in Malacañang afterwards.
In a press conference on Friday at the Patio Victoria here, Marcos, who just came from a campaign sortie in Bacoor, Cavite, said he received the disturbing news at the tail end of his 24-hour Luzon-Visayas-Mindanao tour for the final leg of his campaign.
“The LP has come up with a so-called Plan B because they have already given up on (Mar) Roxas,” Marcos said in Filipino.
He said he received the information from an LP member, who was not identified.
“If Duterte wins, he will be impeached and removed. They are really afraid…They are already seeing the steel bars so they will do anything,” Marcos said, apparently referring to the administration.
The vice presidential candidate said the voters on Monday will have to be very wary of the “acts of desperation” that some parties and candidates will do.
“We have to be very, very sure to do everything we can for the true votes, the true choice of the people, to emerge and not the LP’s choice,” he said.
‘Mind-conditioning’
On Wednesday night, during Marcos’ miting de avance in Mandaluyong City, he said there were moves to manipulate the surveys to create a trending effect and enable Roxas’ performance to improve.
Marcos noted that the number of undecided people suddenly surged just a few weeks before the elections.
“They are manipulating the surveys and counting respondents who favor me among the undecided,” he said in Filipino.
“This is mind-conditioning because what they want to say is they are winning. They are cooking up the numbers,” he said.
Marcos said he was aware of the possibility that such a move on the part of the administration party would happen toward the end of the campaign period.
“I hope it’s not true but that is a fear not only of myself, not only of the other candidates, but of very, very many Filipinos,” he had said on Wednesday night.
Robredo, the widow of Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, has risen to the top of the voter preferential surveys in what now appears to be a neck-and-neck race with Marcos, son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Leni’s character
But Robredo said Marcos’ allegations showed how little he knew of her character.
“He doesn’t know me. That’s not my world. They are the politicians. I am a very new politician. The kind of politics my husband and I started is not the same as theirs,” Robredo said.
“It’s saddening. I think he’s trying to court the Duterte votes. But he can do that without lying,” the Camarines Sur congresswoman told reporters at the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City.
“It’s sad he has to resort to allegations such as this,” she said.
The latest Social Weather Stations-BusinessWorld survey, whose results were released on Friday, also showed a virtual tie between the two front-runners, with only three days to go before the election.
Marcos led Robredo by one point with 29 percent of the hypothetical voter to her 28 percent, but the two were in a statistical tie for first place given the margin of error of plus-or-minus one percent.
She said her performance in the survey was a kind of vindication, as Marcos had previously expressed skepticism about the validity of her polling numbers while celebrating whenever he came out on top.
“We need to work harder. We only have two days, so probably, there’s little else we can do but to pray,” Robredo said.
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