ELECTION 2010: Roxas for their vice-president?

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“We will support whoever will win in CPM’s vice-presidential elections,” Karaos said, whether it would be Roxas or another candidate. “Even if the winner is not Aquino’s running mate,” she added.

Aquino said earlier that he is waiting for Senator Roxas to decide on the former’s request to become his running mate in 2010.

Muslim leader Mhos Abas, a member of CPM from Mindanao, said that Roxas is not particularly loved by people from Central Mindanao because of his stand against the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) between the government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

If Roxas would win in the CPM elections and would be formally announced as Aquino’s running mate in the 2010 elections, they would have to organize a series of seminars in Mindanao so Roxas could explain properly his stand against the MOA-AD, Abas said.

He has to explain his stand because “nagtanim na ng sama ng loob ang mga tao sa Mindanao dahil sa kanyang posisyon sa MOA-AD (people in Mindanao harbored ill-feelings against Roxas because of his position against the MOA-AD),” Abas added.

If not, it would be hard to translate votes for the senator, he said.

Arragoza said that when Roxas spoke in a meeting with Muslim leaders, the latter concluded that the Senator needs more information about what is happening in Mindanao and why the MOA-AD is important for them.

But, “they admire Roxas’ political conviction when he said that he knows that he will not have a lot of votes in the area because of what he believes in,” Arragoza said.

Soliman said that in their May 2009 CPM nominations for support process, Senators Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan and Escudero and Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay were among the 9 candidates in the CPM’s shortlist for vice-president.

But the said list is now void, Soliman said.

They will reconvene and re-elect new candidates since Binay declared that he might not run to give way to Roxas’ probably candidacy for vice-president. The voting will be done through on-line and text votes of CPM members, Soliman said.

The CPM will announce before end of the September 2009 who they will support as vice-president in the upcoming elections. – abs-cbnNEWS.com/ Newsbreak