MANILA - Executives of the administration party Lakas-Kampi-Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD) on Thursday said they are trying to rein in senatorial candidates grumbling about the lack of logistical support, promising them that the party’s support will be all out at the start of the campaign for local officials late this month.
But Saranggani Governor Miguel Dominguez, Lakas-Kampi-CMD national president, said that candidates should also tap their own resources, and share the costs of their campaign.
“We’d like to assure them that the party’s support would remain and would be increasing leading up to the campaign season of local officials later this month. By this time, we expect that the local leaders would be going all out in their support not just for Gilbert Teodoro, but for the entire slate,” he said in a phone interview.
“But it should be a cost-sharing formula, you cannot depend on the party 100 percent, they should also spend for their campaign,” Dominguez added.
Asked what resources the party could provide its national candidates, he said this could include campaign materials, lodging, food and air fare during sorties, and even rental fees for choppers that they could use to hop from one province to another.
Close to elections, he said, Lakas-Kampi candidates would also be provided with poll watchers and also sample ballots that would bear their names.
In a separate interview, Ray Roquero, Lakas-Kampi-CMD deputy secretary general, dismissed complaints about the lack of party funding.
“We don’t have funding problems. Maybe some just feel they need more, but everywhere you go, candidates would always say, they need more money for campaign,” he said.
Lawyer Mike Toledo, Teodoro’s spokesman, said there could have been just a “slight delay” in the release of funds. But as far as Teodoro was concerned, he said funding was never a problem.
He added that they would be coming out with more ads soon on television and radio.
Earlier, at the Serye forum in Quezon City, lawyer Raul Lambino, a senatorial candidate of Lakas-Kampi-CMD, griped about the lack of support from the party for his campaign.
He said he has been relying heavily on the support he has been getting from families and friends to continue moving around the country.
Lambino added that Teodoro and the senatorial candidates have yet to meet anew and plan their sorties together since they attendeded the inaugural campaign in Antipolo City last February 9.
In an earlier report, fellow senatorial candidate, former Cabinet Secretary Silvestre Bello III, also rued that the other senatorial candidates have more campaign materials like posters and streamers and had more ads on TV and radio.
Both Bello and Lambino have been rating poorly in the surveys.
Lambino, a lawyer, said he has truckloads of posters courtesy of Prospero Pichay, presidential political adviser, but could not pay for people who would mount them on common poster areas.
He said he spends his own money in most of the sorties, like in his recent trip to Hong Kong, where he attended an event of the evangelical leader Pastor Apollo Quiboloy of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ group.
“Feel na feel ko talaga ang hirap ng kampanyang ito (I really feel the difficulty of this campaign),” Lambino said, making a banter out of his TV ads, which came out prior to the official campaign period on February 9.
In his TV ads, Lambino narrated how he rose from being a gasoline boy to a lawyer. His campaign line was, “Feel ko ang pinagdadaanan mo (I feel what you’re going through).”
Asked if he thinks party funds are being diverted elsewhere, he said, “I don’t know if that is the case. I don’t even know if there are funds available in the coffers of the party.”
In the same forum, Manila Representative Bienvenido Abante said funding problems do not bode well for the party and could lead to its collapse.
He also said that some local leaders like him are at a loss as to where the party would take the campaign.
“There ought to be a meeting of the national executive council to know the battle plan,” he said.
Broadcaster Rey Langit, another Lakas-Kampi-CMD senatorial candidate, does not share Lambino’s sentiments.
He said he just try to make do with what he has to pursue his campaign.
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