Manila: With the campaign for the midterm elections already on the home stretch, a senatorial candidate said he will not abandon his anti-corruption crusade even if it means losing support from some of his fellow bets.

“My campaign slogan ‘not a thief and will never steal from the people’ will remain, no matter how my fellow candidates may perceive it to mean,” Jiggy Manicad, a 44-year-old former journalist, said in a Facebook post.

Manicad is running as an independent in the May 13 midterm elections, but he is campaigning for Duterte administration backed Hugpong ng Pagbabago (Political Alliance for Change). And this is where his interest as a politician runs counter to some of his fellow senatorial candidates.

Hugpong was founded by President Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter, incumbent Davao City Mayor Sarah Duterte. Most, if not all, of its candidates come from established political families or are political neophytes but are fully supported by the alliance and have fat campaign kitties at their disposal.

Reports have it that some of his co-members in Hugpong are not backing Manicad’s campaign because of his anti-corruption stand. Some are not using his posters and other materials during their provincial campaign drives.

“If I have hurt people because of my slogan, I’m sorry. But this is really me and what I believe in,” Manicad said.

Manicad’s face and presence is familiar to Filipino television viewers and netizens. Only late last year, he was reporter for GMA News and hosted a tele-magazine programme for the same network until restrictions of the elections commission and the hectic campaign schedules prevented him from continuing with his appearances on TV.

In the Philippines, it is not unusual for broadcast media personalities to enter politics. To name one, Noli de Castro, a long time news presenter for ABS-CBN, served as Senator and later, as vice-president in 2004 to 2010. Other news personalities had also made use of the familiarity that they had cultivated with their broadcast presence to leverage their political career.

But Manicad admits that while face recall and familiarity with issues play a strong role, waging a campaign for public office is still built in large part on logistics. He says he is undaunted.

“No helicopter, aeroplane and hundreds of assistants, no problem,” he said while pointing out that he has only one campaign vehicle and helps out in posting campaign posters and tarpaulins whenever he visits a place.

“If others employ hundreds of people to put up tarpaulins and posters, my team has only two people putting up posters,” he said.