Villar forges alliance with rival to counter Aquino

Manila: Presidential candidate Manny Villar has named Senator Loren Legarda as his running mate in the 2010 elections in a move aimed at countering Benigno Aquino's growing popularity.

Villar is president of the Nacionalista Party while Legarda belongs to the Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC). Legarda is regarded as a political opportunist. She was expected to be the vice-presidential candidate of the NPC, but last month, its presidential candidate Senator Chiz Escudero, left the party.

Villar's announcement was made at the Nationalista Party headquarters in suburban Mandaluyong.

"It's a winnable team," said a party member about the Villar-Legarda team.

For a year, Villar was leading in popularity polls until a recent poll showed he had been overtaken by Liberal Party's presidential candidate Aquino, son of the late democracy icon Corazon Aquino.

Legarda's popularity also remained lacklustre. She ranked a far second to Aquino's vice-presidential candidate Mar Roxas, based on the same Pulse Asia survey.

In the 2004 polls, Legarda had lost to her colleague, former broadcast journalist Noli de Castro, who won as the vice-presidential candidate of President Gloria Arroyo.

In Pulse Asia's survey, Aquino got a 44 per cent popularity rating, and Villar, 19 per cent, down from 25 per cent in August. .

In the same survey, former president Joseph Estrada, came in fourth with a 11 per cent rating. The candidate of Arroyo's ruling coalition, Lakas, Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, got two per cent of the votes.

In the survey for vice-presidential candidates, Roxas received a 37 per cent popularity rating while Legarda got 23 per cent.

In another survey, done by a Social Weather Station, in northern Luzon in early October, 60 per cent said they would vote for Aquino.

"A vote for Aquino is a vote against corruption," taxi driver Manuel Loob said. "I will vote for Aquino," Loob said when told that Aquino belongs to one of the oldest and rich families in the country.

Aquino's mother has been criticised for exempting in 1987, the 6,500 hectare Hacienda Luisita in central Luzon from land reform, her centrepiece programme.

But after her death from colon cancer in August this year, the outpouring of support for her family was translated as a support for her son, a soft-spoken senator, as a presidential candidate of the opposition.

Corazon Aquino was catapulted to the presidency by a people-backed military mutiny that ousted former dictator Ferdinand Marcos.