LP optimistic of Region 8 votes for admin presidential, VP bets

TACLOBAN CITY, March 21 (PNA) -– Former Liberal Party (LP) president and Northern Samar Rep. Raul Daza is positive that the party’s standard bearer Mar Roxas and running mate Leni Robredo will get majority of votes in Eastern Visayas region, despite post-Yolanda response criticisms.

“Even if we have problems in promoting the candidacy of Roxas in Tacloban, we are confident to win the presidential race in other provinces of Eastern Visayas,” said Daza, the LPs president from 1994 to 1999 and current party chairman for the region.

Rival political leaders like those in Samar and Eastern Samar provinces expressed their support for Roxas-Robredo tandem.

In Northern Samar, the two top political families who were in political feud for more than 30 years now, have forged an alliance last year to support the administration candidates.

Incumbent officials of Biliran province and Southern Leyte are both known to be supporters of LP. In Leyte, a province dominated by Petilla political clan, is also backing the candidacy of Roxas.

The official admitted that convincing voters in this city to support the candidacy of administration party bets is a big challenge due to issues related to post-Yolanda rehabilitation.

Daza said that although LP presidential bet Mar Roxas has the support of most political leaders in the region, the case is different in Tacloban since they don’t have strong political leaders.

“There’s really a challenge in informing the people of Tacloban what the national government has done for the city to help typhoon victims,” Daza told reporters.

Tacloban is the regional capital of Eastern Visayas region and the bailiwick of Romualdez political clan.

“Yolanda had become politicized specially in Tacloban. But I think it can easily be shown that from the President down to the last cabinet member, everything was done to alleviate the suffering of people,” he added.

Daza recalled that before, during and after super typhoon Yolanda, Roxas, then secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government was in Tacloban along with Department of National Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin.

President Aquino also checked the condition of the city two days after the catastrophe that claimed nearly 3,000 lives.

The national government has poured in billions of pesos to fund the construction of about 14,000 permanent shelters in the northern part of the city, to include the rehabilitation of public structures of the city government destroyed by the 2013 disaster. (PNA)
FFCSQM/RTA/EGR