Failed unity attempt means ‘Duterte win is inevitable’

President Benigno Aquino III’s last-minute attempt to unify candidates against Rodrigo Duterte is an admission that the Davao City mayor’s victory in tomorrow’s presidential election is inevitable, the front-runner’s camp said yesterday.

Leoncio Evasco Jr., Duterte’s national campaign manager, said the call for unity against the Davao mayor was “the ultimate insult to the Filipino people and a final act of betrayal.”

He said the Filipino people were “demanding change” not only in the presidency but also “meaningful and radical change in leadership.”

“The unity we want is the unity of the people and their leaders. Only Mayor Rodrigo Duterte can unite the Filipino people,” he said.

Duterte’s camp also questioned Mr. Aquino’s statesmanship after the desperate call on the other candidates to unite against Duterte, made by the President in an interview with Inquirer reporters and editors in Malacañang on Friday.

“Can you believe it? Where have you seen anything like this? Malacañang is urging all the other candidates to unite against Duterte. Is this the way of a statesman, the President of the Philippines?” Martin Diño, also a campaign manager for Duterte, said in Filipino at a news conference in San Juan City.

Diño said that as President, Mr. Aquino should not campaign for candidates but for “clean and honest elections.”

That is Mr. Aquino’s “sacred duty” to the people, Diño said.

Unity call

Duterte is dominating the polls as the campaign hit the homestretch on Friday,

Mr. Aquino called on his chosen candidate, Liberal Party (LP) standard-bearer Mar Roxas, second-favorite Sen. Grace Poe and their other rivals to unite to prevent a victory by the antiestablishment mayor, whom he said was a threat to democracy.

Mr. Aquino did not say who should withdraw from the race, but Roxas called a news conference at 5:30 p.m. to ask Poe to come to a “unity” meeting.

In an interview on television, Poe rejected Roxas’ invitation, telling him that she was not going to withdraw from the race.

The two other presidential candidates, Vice President Jejomar Binay and Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago also said they were staying in the race.

Binay’s campaign strategist, Ronaldo Puno, yesterday dismissed the administration’s “belated call” for unity.

“We don’t need to join anybody,” Puno said. “If they want to join us, they’re welcome. They can join Vice President Binay so it can be democracy for sure.”

He added: “We’re going to win.”

Evasco said Roxas’ call for an alliance with Poe was synonymous to “conceding that his kind is being repudiated by the people.”

“They want Grace Poe to concede and give way to [Roxas] so that their ilk will continue their exploitative reign,” he said, adding President Aquino was brokering the proposed alliance.

People’s will

On Saturday, Poe stood firm on her decision not to give way to Roxas, saying doing so would be “subversion of the will of the people.”

Poe said forming an alliance to beat Duterte was not the right way to change the mind of the people.

“What we need to do is to communicate better our platforms,” she said. “Even if we band together, this is not a process of elimination. The people will choose who they think is the real leader, who will do them good.”

Poe said she had committed to the people, not to Roxas, to run.

“I campaigned for months and told the people this is what I planned to do for them,” she said. “And in the end only the two of us will make a decision for the country? Isn’t that something that should be done through the ballot?”

Poe said the proposal of Roxas’ camp for her to withdraw so her votes would push him to victory was not grounded on reality.

“The surveys showed that only 17 percent of my votes would go to Mar if I quit,” said Poe, who stood to get 41 percent of Roxas’ votes should the LP standard-bearer drop out of the race.

Poe said she had no goons or machinery to stop what Roxas or his camp wanted to do. With reports from Leila B. Salaverria and Tarra Quismundo in Manila; Gabriel Cardinoza and Yolanda Sotelo, Inquirer Northern Luzon

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