This was the message directed on Friday by Lakas-Kampi-CMD lawmakers led by Speaker Prospero Nograles to Cebu Rep. Antonio Cuenco, who had claimed that nearly a hundred of the ruling coalition’s members in the House favored the Liberal Party standard-bearer, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.
Nograles said that contrary to the results of Cuenco’s admittedly informal survey, Defense Secretary Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro was clearly the ruling coalition’s choice based on the results of its national executive committee meeting last week. The selection of the Harvard-trained lawyer as Lakas-Kampi-CMD standard-bearer is to be ratified in a caucus next month.
But Cuenco, a member of the ruling coalition, said he was standing by his claim that most of the colleagues he had talked with favored the son of the late President Corazon Aquino. He had also said he was still undecided whom to support in 2010.
“That was my own private survey. They are free to disagree,” he said yesterday.
“[Cuenco] may have been speaking only for himself. I don’t think there is any basis for [his claim]. A great majority of our members are highly principled, and I don’t think their choice of Gibo was plainly based on what Congressman Cuenco describes as pork barrel considerations,” Nograles said, adding:
“[He] has been with the yellow movement since 1985, and maybe that’s his emotional sentiment. I’m sure the other Cebu congressmen do not feel like he does.”
