CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Was the last elections payback time of Kapampangans for candidate Richard Gordon, or has Pampanga again resurrected its Marcos-era reputation as opposition country?
Official and complete provincial tally of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) indicated Gordon of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) topped senatorial candidates in Pampanga.
Gordon garnered 470,426 votes, ahead of Loren Legarda who got 460,528 votes and Grace Poe with 445,760. In the national tally, Poe topped, followed by Legarda. Gordon landed 13th.
The final provincial tally also showed Nancy Binay with 444,856 votes; Cynthia Villar with 432,707; Francis Escudero with 412,660; Sonny Angara with 383,584; Bam Aquino with 334,676; Allan Peter Cayetano with 391,059; Migz Zubiri with 335,665; Coco Pimentel with 315,267; and JV Ejercito with 288,899.
Gordon is a native of Olongapo City in Central Luzon. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1992, Gordon was chairman of SBMA and was known to have mobilized resources to help in rescue operations in Pampanga and other parts of the region.
In recent years, Gordon, as chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross, had also personally supervised rescue and relief missions in flooded Pampanga.
Some sectors said that the results of the recent polls seemed to indicate that Pampanga has revived its Marcos-era reputation as “oppositionist”, with many local candidates from the opposition, at least from local parties identified with former Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, emerging victorious in the last elections.
This, amid a growing perception that the Aquino administration has shelved plans to transform the Clark International Airport into a main gateway and its totally abandoning a railways project that would link Clark and Metro Manila.
The Aquino administration had initiated criminal and other charges against Arroyo, who won by landslide in the last polls in her congressional re-election bid in Pampanga’s second district, although her being in hospital detention on charges of election fraud had prevented her from campaigning and casting her votes in her Lubao hometown.
