Padaca brother no-show in Isabela campaign trail

ILAGAN CITY , Philippines   â€“ With barely three weeks before the elections, a younger brother of Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Grace Padaca who is running for Isabela governor has yet to be seen in the campaign trail.

Marlo Angelo Padaca, 49, is neither in his residence in District 1, Cauayan City, hometown of the Dy clan, nor anywhere in the province conducting his campaign sorties.

Padaca is pitted against incumbent Gov. Faustino Dy III, his sister’s arch-rival. However, political experts dismissed him as politically unknown unlike his sister.

Commissioner Padaca had been expected to give a good fight against Dy until she was appointed to the Comelec last year. She lost to Dy in the last elections by a slim margin, spoiling what could be her third and last term as governor.  

Commissioner Padaca rose to political prominence in the 2004 elections when she defeated Dy’s elder brother, then incumbent governor Faustino Jr., by an unprecedented 42,000-vote margin. It was the first time the Dys lost the governorship which their family had held for over three decades.

Today, however, the Padaca residence has no posters or streamers on Marlo’s gubernatorial bid.

Maridel Justo, secretary to Padaca’s eldest brother Carlito, told The STAR that Marlo has just left “somewhere.” 

The boy who delivers newspapers to the Padacas said he was told that Marlo is in Mindoro.

“He (Marlo) is not campaigning; maybe he realized the futility of running against Dy,” said 63-year-old businesswoman Soccoro Mananquil.

Mananquil added though that should Marlo fight it out, she would help him in his campaign.

A Management graduate, Marlo, lost in the barangay elections in November 2010. There were speculations that his sister would substitute for him at the last minute last December, but this did not happen.

Marlo filed his candidacy for governor under the Aksyon Demokratiko party founded by the late senator Raul Roco.