BY GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Negros Occidental Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson yesterday dismissed the press conference of three presidential candidates, including Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, who is calling for Vice President Leni Robredo to withdraw from the presidential race, as a “dud.”
“People were expecting more than what they said yesterday (April 17),” Lacson, who is a supporter of VP Leni, said.
He said that people are expecting that the lower ranking presidential candidates will withdraw in favor of Moreno during the press conference.
But it turned out they were just telling us what we already knew. So, I think there was no need for that press conference. It was disappointing and I don’t know what they were trying to achieve just to make that kind of announcement,” Lacson said.
Moreno, Manny Pacquiao, who was not able to attend the press conference, Senator Panfilo Lacson and former Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales, are trailing behind Robredo in the national surveys, with Ferdinand Marcos Jr. currently enjoying a comfortable lead.
Despite the survey results, Moreno, Lacson and Gonzales, who attended the press conference, stressed that they will never withdraw from the presidential race.
“I don’t think it can affect Leni,” Lacson said, stressing that the clamor now is for the opposition to rally behind a winning candidate.
For sure, the three lower ranking presidential candidates will have to explain what they said during the press conference, he added.
Former Murcia Mayor Esteban “Sonny” Coscolluela reported yesterday that 90 percent of the governors, and 80 percent of the mayors all over the country, are supporting Marcos Jr.
Coscolluela, who is the spokesman of the Marcos campaign in Negros Occidental, claimed that “we are on our way to the victory.”
He said that the final game changer, which he also calls also the last nail of the coffin of the number two presidential candidate, was the press conference of Moreno, Lacson and Gonzales which “tells us why we will win.”
The three presidentiables acknowledged that BBM is number one, with his margin to number two (Robredo) impossible to catch up, and kept on saying that number 2 cannot overtake number one (Marcos), Coscolluela said.
In a statement, Moreno claimed his call for Robredo to withdraw is just a “fair” way to give her “a dose of her own medicine” as he pushed the false claim that her camp has been persistently intensifying calls for other candidates to withdraw “in the belief that it will make her win against Marcos Jr.”*
