PNoy still noncommittal on Mar-Poe tandem

President Benigno Aquino III could not give a categorical statement on whether or not he will support the Mar Roxas-Grace Poe tandem for 2016, which was floated by a Liberal Party official as the "team to beat" in the next elections.

Aquino, however, promised that whatever his party will decide on, it will be a “collective decision.”

“We pride ourselves in our party of being a place where there is a collective decision,” Aquino said in a media interview with reporters in Myanmar, where he is attending the 25th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit.

Aquino said he would rather wait for the party decision, least any comment he makes be taken out of context.

“Tomorrow somebody will say, na I decided on this route without consulting anybody. So I’ll be betraying the principles that made us, di ba?” he said.

On Wednesday, Caloocan Rep. Edgar Erice bared that the ruling party is considering the Roxas-Poe tandem in 2016, even describing the team-up as the “team to beat.”

“Ito 'yung team to beat,” Erice, LP's chair for political affairs, said in a report on “24 Oras.” “With the President as the campaign manager, Mar Roxas as presidential candidate and Grace Poe as the vice president, palagay ko walang tatalo.”

Erice said most members of the party are in favor of the tandem, although their selection process for the candidates will not be held until 2015.

Poe, a neophyte senator, is the daughter of the late movie icon Fernando Poe Jr., who ran for president in 2004 but lost to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. —Patricia Denise Chiu/KBK, GMA News