Leni asks provincemates to vote for Mar, too

NAGA CITY, Philippines – Liberal Party vice presidential candidate Leni Robredo has appealed to her provincemates to vote not just for her but also for LP standard bearer Manuel Roxas II and the 12 senatorial candidates on the administration slate.

The city is part of her jurisdiction as Camarines Sur representative. Her late husband Jesse Robredo was city mayor for three consecutive terms.

“If you’re going to help me, please also help (former interior) Sec. Mar Roxas. Those who’ll help me, I wish will also help all 12 senatorial candidates because we walk as one family,” Robredo said at a campaign rally here in Bicolano dialect.

“If you’re going to help me but not my president, I won’t have the leeway to work as my responsibilities will depend on what kind of work the sitting president will give me,” she said.

She said when her husband was still mayor of the city, Roxas was a frequent visitor to the city and the province.

Robredo maintained it was only under the present administration that the province experienced an outpouring of projects “because our government is clean and straight.”

“Our president (Roxas) is close to us, cares for us, so he’ll always listen to us,” Robredo said.

She said she was surprised last year when Roxas called her up and asked her to be his running mate in the May elections.

It was an agonizing decision, she said. But in the end, she said yes because her children gave her their consent.

In the Legazpi City leg of her Bicol campaign, Robredo told supporters how she still misses very much her late husband’s habit of giving her “leftover” flowers used as Valentine’s Day giveaways to Naga City hall employees.