Grace Poe is wild card in 2016

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas

Sen. Grace Poe denied again on Monday that she has any plans of running for a higher office in 2016. That’s the second time she has said so amid increasing calls for the 2013 senatorial elections top vote getter to run for president or vice president in the coming presidential elections.

The neophyte lady senator made the statement after two successive reports that she was being wooed by both the opposition United Nationalist Alliance and the ruling Liberal Party to be the running mate of presumptive presidential candidates Vice President Jojo Binay of UNA and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas of the LP, and that a faction of the camp of President Aquino is considering fielding the tandem of Poe and Sen. Chiz Escudero in 2016.

I can believe both reports. Poe is the hottest political commodity at the moment and will continue to be so as 2016 approaches. There is no doubt that both Binay and Roxas would love to have Poe as their running mates for different reasons.

Binay needs someone who has integrity and credibility to balance all the negative reports that have hounded him in the last few months, particularly allegations of overpricing and irregularities in the construction of a Makati car park cum office building and unexplained wealth in relation to the ownership of several pricey properties, including the so-called Hacienda Binay in Batangas.

Roxas, on the other hand, needs someone who is popular with the people to offset his nagging low ratings in popularity surveys. Poe, after all, topped the last senatorial elections in overwhelming fashion and has consistently topped possible candidates for the vice presidency, also by a wide margin.

I can also understand why the two are eager to get Poe to run as their running mate. First, they would gain from her popularity and more importantly, they would eliminate a strong challenger.

Had Poe declared herself available for the presidency, I am certain that she would surpass Binay in no time.

Although I can also believe that Poe might not be considering a presidential or vice presidential run in 2016, there is no saying that she would not capitulate to the “growing clamor” for her to do so. I don’t think she is too naïve to not consider a run for either the presidency or vice presidency. There is no better time for her to do so considering the continued demolition of Binay and the consistently low popularity rating of Roxas.

At the present time, there is no other name being floated around for either the presidency or the vice presidency that could come close to beating Binay for the presidency. Senators Antonio Trillanes IV and Alan Peter Cayetano, Binay’s tormentors in the Senate, are obviously interested but I doubt if their ratings would rise to a level that gain the interest of known kingmakers like Aquino of LP, Danding Cojuangco of the Nationalist People’s Alliance, and former Senate President Manny Villar of the Nacionalista Party, or even former President Joseph Estrada of Partido ng Masang Pilipino.

Sen. Chiz Escudero has both the popularity and integrity enjoyed by Poe, but my guess is Escudero is not too keen on running in 2016 unless teamed with Poe. So his fate depends largely on whether Poe would run for president, or whether she would run at all even for vice president.

I may be wrong, but I believe Poe would eventually respond positively to the “growing clamor” for her to run for president. Although a political neophyte, I imagine her to be wise enough to know that it is too early to declare for the presidency and that it is a matter of timing for such declaration.

We all know what is happening to Binay after he declared from Day One of his vice presidency that he is available for the presidency in 2016. He did not only give his opponents time to map out a time plan and strategy for demolishing him, but also opened himself to the possibility that he would peak too soon.

I think Binay’s popularity has peaked and that it would be downward from hereon. It reached its crescendo earlier this year and with all the negative publicity about his alleged corruption, it is almost certain to go downward.

Meanwhile, expect the ratings of Poe to shoot up even more with the frequent floating of her name and the sudden high profile that she has been projecting in the Senate.

In a privilege speech on October 27, Poe proved herself knowledgeable of national issues. In the speech, she called for concrete action against poverty as she denounced the fact that 15 million children remain hungry and malnourished amid the continued growth of the Philippine economy.

It was a scathing denunciation of the Aquino administration’s inability to solve the problem of poverty while boasting of economic growth.

“We shouldn’t allow the applause of rating agencies drown out the grumbling of empty stomachs,” she said. “We should let the issue of hunger gnaw at bureaucracy’s thick walls or the officialdom’s thick hides the way an ulcer lacerates the gut.”

In the same speech, Poe called for an increase in the budget next year for children’s feeding programs, which could be done by doing away with “frivolous” budgetary items. She also called for sincere efforts to invest in and improve agricultural programs by giving these sufficient funding.

A day after the speech, Poe made her first statement denying a run for higher office. A political analyst had speculated that Poe would run for president after Poe used her late father Fernando Poe Jr.’s campaign slogan of “altanghap” (almusal, tanghalian and hapunan) in her privilege speech.

Earlier, Poe lambasted Philippine National Police chief Director General Alan Purisima for travelling out of the country amid the rising criminality in the country. She also called for an investigation into Purisima’s unexplained wealth.

Poe is definitely not a pushover senator. According to her website, Poe has filed and co-authored 107 measures consisting of 34 bills and 73 resolutions in her first year in office. She sponsored five bills, three of which have been approved by the Senate during the first regular session of the 16th Congress. She has also persistently pushed for the passage of the Freedom of Information Act.

Just this week, Poe was named this year’s Lee Kuan Yew Exchange Fellow, the third awardee from the Philippines and the 46th from all over the world since the program started. Lee Kwan Yew fellows are selected for their “track record and extraordinary potential to contribute to the development of their nations.”

In this coming year, we can expect Poe’s name to be mentioned every time there is a discussion of the 2016 presidential elections. Despite her reluctance and denials, Poe has become the wild card in 2016. And that bodes well for Philippine politics. People should be given better choices for the next president who will steer the country through critical times.

(valabelgas@aol.com)