Teodoro Not Bothered about Lack of Support from Administration

MANILA, Philippines—Lakas-Kampi-CMD standard-bearer Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro on Thursday shrugged off suspicions that President Arroyo and her husband, Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo, were not solidly behind him in his bid for President in the May elections.

Over dinner at the office of the Inquirer, Teodoro said he had no doubts about the support of President Arroyo and the Lakas-Kampi-CMD hierarchy led by its party president, Sarangani Governor Miguel Dominguez.

“As party members, they should [support my candidacy]” Teodoro said. “My job is to expose myself."

“Whether there is distance, whether there is closeness, at the end of the day, it’s my decision that counts,” Teodoro, who served as Ms Arroyo’s secretary of national defense, said.

He described his relationship with the President as “professional.”

According to Dominguez, 70 percent of all electoral positions in the May elections could be won by the Lakas-Kampi-CMD candidates. He also dismissed survey results showing Teodoro in fourth place, after Senator Aquino, Senator Villar and former President Joseph Estrada.

“We had a late start [in the political advertising race]. We are hoping to correct this once the official campaign period starts this February,” he said.

The 46-year-old Teodoro, who is a reserved colonel in the Armed Forces and a licensed pilot, described himself as a “winnable, not winning, but winnable candidate.”

A bar topnotcher with a master’s degree in law from Harvard, Teodoro began his law career as litigation lawyer at the law firm of Marcos-era Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza, handling various ill-gotten wealth cases filed against his uncle, businessman and known Marcos crony Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco.

In 1998, Teodoro joined Cojuangco’s Nationalist People’s Coalition and won a seat in the House of Representatives for the First District of Tarlac. The Second District seat was won by his second-degree cousin, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, now the standard-bearer of the Liberal Party.

But Teodoro quit the NPC and joined the ruling Lakas-Kampi-CMD party, which drafted him as standard-bearer for the presidential elections late last year.

Neither Cojuangco nor the NPC has endorsed Teodoro’s candidacy.

He said he would also move to increase the strength of the Armed Forces and contain the threat groups in Mindanao.

“Employing international paradigm shift in Mindanao will not work. There is no danger whatsoever [of the threat groups winning the rebellion], “ he said.

But he said the AFP was not prepared to handle an asymmetric warfare, such as bombings, in the metropolis.