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PDP-Laban won’t endorse VP Binay’s candidacy in 2016


Vice President Jejomar Binay's bid for the presidency will not be endorsed by the party that launched his political career in the 80s.

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, the president of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), on Monday said Binay's name isn't on the list of candidates the party will probably support in the 2016 elections.

“Opo, malabo na po (i-endorso si Binay). If ever hindi tumakbo is Davao City Mayor (Rodrigo) Duterte, the party will look for other candidates to endorse but definitely Vice President Binay will not be on that list,” Pimentel told reporters after the weekly news forum in Manila.

Pimentel has been floating the name of the Davao City official as the party's probable standard-bearer.

Asked if it is because of the corruption allegations Binay is facing, the senator said: “Yes.”

The Vice President is accused of involvement in the overpricing in the construction of several buildings in Makati, bid rigging, receiving kickbacks, and owning properties not declared in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Networth.

Pimentel is the chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon subcommittee conducting an investigation on the allegations against Binay. In an initial committee report, the subcommittee recommended the filing of plunder charges against the Vice President and others in connection with the overpriced Makati City Hall Building II.

PDP-Laban severed ties with the opposition coalition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) in 2014 after Binay resigned from the party.

Binay has been a member  of the party since the merger in 1983 of the PDP of then Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr., Senator Pimentel's father; and the Laban party of then-Sen. Benigno “Ninoy Aquino Jr., the late father of President Benigno Aquino III.

UNA was formed when Binay aligned PDP-Laban with former President Joseph Estrada's Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) for the 2010 national elections.

Pimentel took a leave of absence from PDP-Laban in 2013 after UNA drafted former Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri to be part of the coalition's senatorial line-up that year. Zubiri was the subject of Pimentel's election protest in 2007.

GMA News Online is trying to get a comment from the camp of Binay regarding the matter but has yet to receive a reply as of posting time. -NB, GMA News

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