Korina: Mar wears tattered shirts at home

Mar Roxas is flanked by wife Korina Sanchez and mother Judy Araneta Roxas. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

MAGSAYSAY, Davao del Sur—Liberal Party standard-bearer Mar Roxas is wealthy but he leads a simple life, prefers simple things and, in fact, does not mind wearing tattered clothes at home, according to his wife, TV broadcaster Korina Sanchez.

“I know my husband very well,” Sanchez said on Wednesday, trying to picture the landlordly Roxas as not really so much different from the farmers who gathered here to receive assistance from the national government.

Sanchez accompanied Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala in distributing P54 million worth of farm implements and other assistance to farmers from different parts of Davao del Sur province.

“Mar is very simple and he likes to wear tattered shirts in the house all the time,” Sanchez said. “The expensive clothes I bought for him remain unworn.”

Plastic watches

Roxas also dislikes wearing expensive accessories in public, Sanchez said.

“Even the expensive watch I bought for him has not been used because he prefers to use the plastic ones,” she said.

TV on farms?

For testimony, she asked farmers from Hagonoy, Bansalan and Santa Cruz if they had seen Roxas wearing expensive watches in TV interviews.

“Didn’t you notice that?” she asked.

Nobody contradicted her, but it wasn’t clear whether it was because the farmers were so poor they don’t have television sets or because there was no electricity on the farms so they could not watch television.

Roxas is a tough sell, ranking third in the voter preference polls for May’s presidential election, but Sanchez tried anyway, doing an analogy in which she likened the presidency to driving a school bus

How’s that again?

“There are four drivers applying for the job. I won’t name them, but one is a thief,” she said in a clear reference to the leader in the polls, Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is accused of corruption.

Not a good choice because the children will learn nothing from that applicant, she said, confusing the bus driver with the schoolteacher.

Another applicant loves to wear white and is kind, she said, but is still trying to learn how to drive and if chosen she might drive the farmers’ children not to their homes in Davao del Sur but to Iloilo.

It was a clear reference to Sen. Grace Poe, but Sanchez did not explain the relation between wearing white and being kind and driving a school bus or how any driver can drive a school bus from Davao del Sur in Mindanao to Iloilo province in the Visayas.

There are roll-on, roll-off ferries, of course, but that’s too much detail to mention, perhaps?

In a clear reference to Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, Sanchez said: “The other one is hot-tempered and always angry. If your children are importunate, he pokes a gun at them. The more unrelenting ones could get slapped, so what will happen to your children?”

Premature campaigning

The fourth applicant, she said, is an expert driver who has been driving for 25 years. “I wouldn’t name him because I know you know him already,” she said.

That’s Roxas, of course, and Sanchez urged the more than 2,000 farmers attending the event to support the administration standard-bearer, as he was the only candidate who could continue President Aquino’s reform program.

Alcala was asked about the propriety of campaigning for Roxas at an event for the distribution of government assistance to farmers and even before the start of the campaign.

The campaign begins on Feb. 9.

Alcala tough-skinned it. “There’s nothing wrong about it because [Roxas] is also being endorsed by the national government,” he said.

Alcala himself made a pitch for Roxas in his speech to the farmers.

But he said the main purpose of their visit here was to distribute  assistance to farmers and to assure them that the government would help them survive the onslaught of El Niño.

Under a Roxas administration, President Aquino’s programs for farmers, including the construction of more farm-to-market roads, organic fertilizer distribution and development of irrigation, would continue, he said.