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Jennifer Rendon - The Philippine Star
February 15, 2025 | 12:00am
President Marcos leads the kickoff campaign rally for the administration’s senatorial bets in Laoag City February 11, 2025. His sister, Sen. Imee Marcos, joined the rally.
Miguel De Guzman, Noel Pabalete
MANILA, Philippines — Although Iloilo City is considered a stronghold of the Liberal Party, Sen. Imee Marcos and her partymates in the Ayansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas hope to sway voters in one of the vote-rich areas in Western Visayas.
Iloilo City has around 319,000 voters, while Iloilo province has about 1.6 million.
“Others told me that I must be desperate because I keep coming back here even though I may not have votes here. People are voting ‘yellow’ there, they told me. But I don’t believe in that. Loyalty is also earned,” she said. Iloilo gave her 230,000 votes in in 2019.
In 2022, Iloilo was one of the 15 provinces where LP standard-bearer Leni Robredo won. The former vice president got 579,525 votes, while President Marcos only got 374,144.
In the 2016 vice presidential race, Marcos only got 127,434 votes from Ilonggos, while Robredo got 706,052.
President Marcos continues swipe
President Marcos again took a swipe at senatorial candidates from rival parties on Thursday, despite his party Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas’ previous commitment to shy away from negative campaigning.
During the second leg of Alyansa’s proclamation rally held in Iloilo City, the President attested to the character of his senatorial bets, saying none of them were ever involved in the previous administration’s controversial Oplan Tokhang.
“None of our candidates were ever involved in pocketing public funds. None of them sucked up to China and clapped their hands whenever our Coast Guard is water bombed by Chinese vessels and the catches of our fishermen are seized,” he added.
According to the President, his 12 candidates – Benhur Abalos, Abby Binay, Pia Cayetano, Ping Lacson, Lito Lapid, Imee Marcos, Manny Pacquiao, Ramon Revilla Jr., Tito Sotto, Francis Tolentino, Erwin Tulfo and Camille Villar – have clean records, that’s why it’s easier for him to campaign for them.
Revilla was cleared of graft and plunder in connection with the pork barrel scam. He has ignored a Sandiganbayan order to return P124.5 million to the government. His aide Richard Cambe was convicted by the Sandiganbayan and died in prison.
Based on estimates by the Philippine National Police, citing reports from the Iloilo City Operations Center, around 30,000 people were present during the rally as of 5 p.m., lower than the earlier estimate of 50,000.
