LP now building consensus on 2016 standard bearer – Aquino

President Benigno Aquino III. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

SINGAPORE—The ruling party Liberal Party is already at the “consensus-building stage” in the process of selecting its standard bearer for the 2016 presidential election, and it may well be cold to the idea of choosing the Vice President Jejomar Binay.

President Benigno Aquino III on Tuesday night hinted that Binay, a long-time family friend, might already be out of the picture among the Liberal Party’s choices of candidates to succeed him less than two years from now.

Asked whether his party was still open to having Binay as its standard bearer, Aquino did not give a direct answer, saying the party arrives at decisions through consensus. Such process, he said, is already “being conducted.”

“For our party, consensus is important. It is not acceptable that someone would speak about something that we have not agreed about yet. So I am not at liberty to talk on behalf of the Liberal Party, and if I talk on an individual basis, the time is not yet right,” the President told reporters covering his trip here Tuesday night.

Aquino said he could not deny speaking to anyone from the United Nationalist Alliance, the opposition party, as he still speaks with at least one of them: the vice president.

“Well, I don’t talk to Toby Tiangco (UNA interim president and Navotas congressman) or others. I did talk to the vice president. So I cannot say that I did not talk to any of them,” said the President on the first night of his two-day visit here.

He said recent chats with Binay, currently under Senate investigation for alleged hidden wealth, have not been about politics but mostly pleasantries whenever the vice president saw him off to foreign trips.

“I’m sure he saw me off somewhere. We had another encounter after that. Like ‘thank you for sending me off.’ Just that. I think that was before I left for APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) and the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) summits [in China and Burma],” Aquino said.

Binay has long made his presidential ambition clear and dismisses recent corruption allegations against him as a partisan operation to bring down his winnability ratings ahead of the elections.

Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, Binay’s political rival, is a Liberal Party official and was Aquino’s running mate in the 2010 elections. He lost the vice presidency to Binay after giving way to Aquino in the face of a public clamor he run for office following the death of his mother, former President Corazon Aquino.

During the interview, Aquino disclosed for the first time that the Liberal Party was already in the selection process for a standard-bearer, and that he was keeping an open ear to all the advice he could get.

“I have been thinking about that and I’ve been pushing for a consensus, a [choice] that would be agreeable to all the groups who support me, who supported me before and who support me now,” Aquino said.

He said he was looking for a candidate who could carry on the reforms that his administration has begun to make sure that such changes would be sustained and not “go back to a situation where our people who have less would again lose hope.”

“So to make sure of that, it is important to have consensus, the agreement of everyone to carry one who would become the face of our platform of governance,” said the President.

He said he was ready to “engage everybody who wants to talk to me, even those who like to give unsolicited advice.”

Speaking before an international audience earlier Tuesday night, Aquino said he was no longer thinking of seeking reelection, and that he was still “not sure” what he would do after his term ends.

He hinted at the idea of seeking reelection in a television interview in August, despite the single-term limit set in the Constitution. The President said then he wanted to ensure that reforms his administration began in 2010 would continue and bear fruit.

“If you’re not looking toward reelection, you find solutions that are in direct answer rather than about how will poll numbers be affected,” he said in a keynote interview at The Economist’s The World in 2015 forum.

Aquino said he was looking forward to “recharging” after he leaves office.

“By our laws, I cannot work for a year, you cannot participate in an industry you regulated. We’re all looking forward to at least one year (of cancelling subscriptions to) newspapers, TV, and recharge. So afterwards, I’m not really sure,” said the President, recalling how his mother went into microfinance after her term ended in 1992.

He said he would remain active in his party.

“I guess to a large degree I will still be helping the party to become that party of ideology that has a platform that is constant and will continue,” said Aquino.

Asked to comment on the recent improvement of the administration’s public satisfaction ratings, Aquino said the people’s opinion about government’s performance swings from time to time, likening the relationship to a marriage.

“Just like a long marriage, you can’t say that every day you will be ok with each other. Sometimes, there are also conflicts that can be fixed because you love each other,” said the bachelor President.

“Here, you could see that no matter what other sectors might say, the people will see what’s real, right? They will see that what we’re doing is right, you don’t have to say it. They will be the ones to see and experience the changes that are happening,” Aquino said.

The latest Social Weather Stations survey showed a “good” third quarter satisfaction rating for the administration at +35, up from the “moderate” +29.

He admitted counting down the days to the end of his term on June 30, 2016, exactly 590 days from the time of the interview.

Aquino cited gains in his four years so far: “The biggest ambition for a lot of Filipinos was to leave the country then. Now, we are getting reverse migration.”

During his remaining time, the President said, he is looking to reach the target of increasing government’s infrastructure spending to five percent of the Gross Domestic Product. Currently, the figure hovers between 3.5 percent and four percent.

At The Economist interview, the President also spoke about ongoing rehabilitation efforts in areas affected by Supertyphoon Yolanda last year, saying government hopes to complete shelter construction by next year.

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