JDV wants Lakas sans Kampi to take its pick among 4 bets

Former House Speaker and Lakas-CMD founder Jose de Venecia Jr. on Thursday said he is planning to retrieve the original Lakas-CMD party from the merged Lakas-Kampi-CMD, then announce which presidential bet to support among the four leading contenders "in the coming weeks," and enter into a coalition with the party of that presidential bet. De Venecia said he will talk with Lakas-CMD co-founder, former president Fidel Ramos, regarding his plans to take back the original party from the one merged with Kampi. The former Speaker added that he and Ramos will call for a press conference in the coming weeks to announce their common choice for presidential bet. “My first duty is to retrieve our party the way President Ramos and I structured it… My second move is sasabihin namin, kayong mga Kampi, ‘Kunin niyo na yung partido ninyo.’ (we will tell the Kampi people, ‘You can take your party with you.’) We were forced to go into an illegal marriage," he said after a forum in Makati on Thursday night. The former House Speaker, who resigned from the ruling party months before its merger with Kampi, added that once he has recovered the original Lakas-CMD, he will form a “rainbow coalition among all the opposition candidates." “If we are able to retrieve the party—not the Lakas-Kampi merger but the Lakas-CMD—then, we will enter into a formal coalition with the party of the presidential candidate that we will support," he said. Ramos formed the Lakas-CMD party in 1991 after he lost his bid to get the nomination of the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP) as its presidential bet. He consequently ran and won as president in 1992 under the new party he formed. Lakas-CMD eventually merged in 2008 with the Kampi party under the leadership of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. De Venecia, a long-standing Ramos ally, challenged the merger, saying it was done without proper consultation. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Supreme Court, however, have separately upheld the merged party’s legality. Two leading candidates In the same interview, De Venecia likewise said that he is eyeing a “formal alliance with the two leading presidential candidates" in case he fails to retrieve the original Lakas-CMD party. “If we cannot retrieve the party, then we could just have a powerful group, and our group will enter into a formal alliance with the two leading presidential contenders." Successive presidential preference polls have consistently shown Senators Benigno Aquino III and Manuel Villar Jr. as the two probable frontrunners in the May polls. De Venecia did not elaborate on how such a formal alliance would take shape in the middle of a hotly-contested presidential race between Aquino and Villar. Not closing doors on Erap, Gibo Despite his intention to forge an alliance with the LP and NP standard-bearers, De Venecia said he is not ruling out former President Joseph Estrada and administration candidate Gilberto Teodoro as prospective choices. “We will choose from Teodoro, Aquino, Villar and Estrada because these are the four leading contenders. And then we will come up with a decision in the next few days," he said. Despite this pronouncement, De Venecia said in the same interview that he is “definitely not" choosing a candidate supported by the current administration. “It [The choice for president] will really depend on my consultations with President Ramos," he said.—JV, GMANews.TV