Ruling party’s Pacquiao camp still ready to support Duterte
THE RULING party’s executive director on Tuesday asserted that the national council meeting on Monday violated their charter, but said the entire PDP-Laban remains prepared to support President Rodrigo R. Duterte in 2022 should he run as vice president.
Ronwald F. Munsayac, executive director of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino–Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), said the meeting held in Cebu was “flawed” because it was not properly coordinated with the party’s president, Senator Emmanuel “Manny” D. Pacquiao.
Mr. Duterte, the party chairman, had ordered Energy Secretary and party vice chair Alfonso G. Cusi to start the assembly, Presidential spokesman Herminio L. Roque, Jr., said on Monday.
The party passed a resolution during the meeting urging Mr. Duterte to run for vice president and asked him to choose his preferred presidential bet.
Mr. Munsayac said Mr. Pacquiao has requested to meet with the President to discuss protocols on calling a national council as well as ask on his plans for 2022.
“If President Duterte really wants to run, the whole of PDP-Laban will be supportive of him,” he said in a mix of English and Filipino.
Meanwhile, Mr. Roque said Mr. Pacquiao is still considered an ally of the administration despite the tension between him and some partymates. “He remains to be party president as of now,” he told a televised news briefing on Tuesday.
Mr. Pacquaio last month criticized the administration’s handling of the country’s territorial dispute with China. He had also called out his partymates who initiated premature calls urging the President to run for the country’s second highest position.
Mr. Roque said the President is yet to decide whether he would accept the call for him to run in the upcoming polls.
Michael Henry Ll. Yusingco, a senior research fellow at the Ateneo de Manila University Policy Center, earlier told BusinessWorld that the cracks within the ruling party would most likely split the Mindanao vote, “as both the Duterte brand and Pacquiao brand are very potent as vote-getters in this region.” — Vann Marlo M. Villegas and Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza
