Ex-speaker Alvarez: We need a leader, not a pretender

Only weeks after leaving the ruling party and criticizing the government’s pandemic response, former House speaker Pantaleon Alvarez embarked on what he called a “voter education” advocacy and launched a movement to seek a true leader and not a pretender.

“We need a leader, a true leader, and not a pretender,” Alvarez said in his message during the launch of “We need a leader, 2022” movement in Tagum City, Davao del Norte, on Sunday.

Alvarez said voters should carefully weigh the qualifications of the president they want to elect on May 9, 2022, because the country has “big and serious problems.”

A president, the Davao del Norte representative said, “should not be numb” to the situation of poor Filipinos and should instead “feel their struggles and pains.”

“A president should have a word of honor. Someone who easily changes his mind and decides back and forth is not OK,” he said.

Alvarez’S remarks sparked off questions about the former speaker’s relationship with President Duterte, a longtime ally.

The 65-year-old Alvarez became speaker of the House of Representatives when Mr. Duterte assumed office in 2016 but was removed in a 2018 power struggle supposedly orchestrated by Mr. Duterte’s daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte.

After his ouster, Alvarez stayed out of the limelight until September when he criticized the government’s response to the pandemic in a television interview as “really a failure. The approach, the way it was handled, was a failure,” he said.

On Nov. 15, Alvarez resigned from the PDP-Laban to lead and revive the Partido para sa Demokratikong Reporma, founded by former military chief Renato de Villa.  q q