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Cebu has a special place in the administration's game plan for the presidential election.
The Nov. 12 national convention of the ruling Lakas-Kampi-CDM party is set in Cebu City, where the standard bearer Gilbert Teodoro will be proclaimed.
His choice of running mate is still up in the air.
A candidate for vice president will still be chosen by party members, said Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri at yesterday's Kapihan sa Senado news forum,
He said that while the administration's choice of presidential candidate has "already been settled," that for the No. 2 post was "still an open book."
The Cebu convention will take place after a Lakas-Kampi CMD caravan, Rep. Nerissa Soon Ruiz (Cebu, 6th district) confirmed in a text message to Cebu Daily News. She said Teodoro would be coming from Iloilo.
Cebu has been touted “GMA country” ever since the province gave her a 1 million vote advantage in the 2004 election.
Speculative reports have circulated in past weeks that Gov. Gwen Garcia was eying the vice presidential slot and had been meeting Teodoro about it.
On the record, however, Garcia waved off such reports saying it’s “too early to talk about politics.”
Her father, Rep. Pablo Garcia, as a Lakas-Kampi partyman, has already announced his support for Teodoro while Gwen, who heads her own One Cebu party, has not yet signaled which presidential candidate she would back.
Teodoro was busy with typhoon disaster-relief operations, but found time to be in Cebu for the governor's birthday last Oct. 12 to sign a pact for the return of 80 hectares of military-occupied property back to the Cebu provincial government as the donor.
The nephew of business tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco was selected by the ruling party's national executive committee as early as Sept. 16. But that selection still needs confirmation by the entire party, Zubiri.
Cojuanco is chairman emeritus of the Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC), which is fielding Sen. Francis Escudero for president with Sen. Loren Legarda in the May 2010 elections.
The confirmation came yesterday from his son Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco, a day before Legarda is to formally announce her intention to seek the vice presidency at Rizal Park in Manila.
Legarda, whose national prominence is boosted by years of exposure as a TV news anchor, said she would make public her political plans for 2010 "alone," suggesting that Escudero would not be around.
She gave no explanation beyond saying that she wanted, not the song-and-dance type of political campaigning, but a "humanitarian advocacy campaign."
Legarda had disclosed in recent interviews that she was being courted by a number of presidential hopefuls—the last three being Escudero, Teodoro and Sen. Manuel Villar of the Nacionalista Party—to be their running mate.
Governors allied with the administration floated last week the possible tandem of Teodoro and Legarda. But on Thursday Legarda dismissed the idea by saying that as an opposition senator, she would "definitely run with the opposition."
In an interview with ABS-CBN, Congressman Cojuangco said his father was expected to attend Legarda's declaration today at Rizal Park.
He said his father was "committed" to support the Escudero-Legarda tandem and the rest of the NPC candidates in the 2010 elections, and belied reports that the tycoon would also back Teodoro, a favorite nephew.
He said the NPC did not kick out Teodoro, and that it was Teodoro who left the party in order to pursue his presidential ambition with Lakas-Kampi-CMD.
The ruling party is a merger of the administration parties Lakas-CMD and Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino.
It can now hold a national convention for the purposes of the 2010 polls because the Commission on Elections has upheld its validity.
In so doing, the Comelec threw out the petition filed by then Speaker Jose de Venecia, who founded the old Lakas-CMD with then presidential candidate Fidel Ramos in 1992.
“The Comelec has already handed down an en banc decision that Lakas-Kampi is a valid political party. So that's good news—a welcome development for our party. We can move forward and consolidate," Congressman Zubiri said.
During the convention, another presidential hopeful and loyal party member, Bayani Fernando, the chair of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, will have an opportunity to contest Teodoro's selection.
