CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -Former president and current Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will commemorate her 66th birth-day on April 5 with a Mass at 10 a.m. at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City, and her allies doubt that she would be able to campaign for re-election in the province’s second district.
“I still don’t know whether she has asked permission from the court to allow her to visit her district to campaign,” said her close ally Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo who is among those slated to attend Arroyo’s birthday mass.
But earlier, the camp of Mrs. Arroyo said that she was not expected to campaign for reelection amid health considerations. She was last seen in Lubao in August last year, distributing relief packs to flood victims.
Only recently, the former president and her son, Camarines Sur (2nd District) Rep. Diosdado Ignacio Arroyo, were charged with plunder before the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with two aborted infrastructure projects in Camarines Sur province allegedly costing P676 million.
Mrs. Arroyo is currently detained at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center for a separate plunder case in connection with alleged misuse of P366-million Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office confidential intelligence funds during her incumbency.
She was allowed by the court to stay at the hospital for a degenerative bone disease which, despite surgery, gave way to more health problems, after her initial arrest in July 2011 for alleged electoral fraud.
This, even as Arroyo’s friend incumbent Gov. Lilia Pineda, who is seeking re-election under the local party Kambilan, also declared she would not campaign in the traditional way.
“I have done my best to help my cabalens since I became governor and now it’s up to them to decide,” said Pineda who was reportedly told by her doctors to rest after she was hospitalized recently amid her tight schedule.
Pineda’s spokesperson Joel Mapiles said Pineda would go on with her job as usual at the provincial Capitol which fills up with folk needing various kinds of help. “She might attend the big rallies of her Kambilan allies but, otherwise, we don’t expect her to go from door to door campaigning,” Mapiles said.
Pineda is being challenged by suspended priest Eddie “Among Ed” Panlilio who is the official candidate of the Liberal Party (LP). Panlilio won against Pineda in the 2007 gubernatorial elections but lost to her in 2010.
As he did in the 2007 campaign trail, Panlilio has been harping on Pineda’s alleged links to the illegal numbers game “jueteng”, as her husband Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda was once linked by the Senate to such gambling operation.
This time, Panlilio said he is batting for a legalized form of jueteng, saying “If you can’t lick them, join them.”
He said that a legalized form of jueteng would remove the hold of jueteng lords in the political system and even in the police force.
Meanwhile, lawyer Vivian Dabu, LP’s congressional challenger to Mrs. Arroyo, has already started campaigning in the second district consisting of Guagua, Sasmuan, Lubao, Sta. Rita, Porac and Floridablanca.
Dabu said she would prioritize in Congress bills that would benefit agriculture, education and employment and defense of ancestral domain.
Dabu ranked 14th in the 1987 accountancy test, finished 13th in the 1992 bar exam and served as provincial administrator during Panlilio’s governorship.
