Legarda yet to decide whether to join LP or UNA

MANILA -- Senator Loren Legarda said she will finalize her political plans a week before the filing of certificate of candidacy for the 2013 midterm elections in the first week of October.

The announcement slated September 24 would also include which of the two groups asking for her inclusion in the senatorial slate--the Liberal Party and the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA)—will get her nod.

"I will announce on that day when I will file and with whom. Let's leave it at that. In the meantime, I would like to focus on saving our fellow Filipinos from bondage and slavery,” she said in a briefing.

Legarda, who topped the senatorial elections in 1998 and 2007, is gunning for a third term and she may easily get it if independent surveys are to be believed.

Recently, UNA officials said they were just waiting for the formal announcement of Legarda's inclusion in the coalition formed by Vice President Jejomar Binay and former President Joseph Estrada, who both backed the lawmaker’s failed bid for the vice presidency in 2004.

Legarda admitted of being comfortable with UNA officials, whom she had worked with for almost a decade. But she didn’t close her doors to the LP after her party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), entered an alliance with the administration for next year.

"I will decide because the NPC has given me the freehand to select in consultation with them. Of course, I will take into consideration whatever talks are on-going with the NPC. In the end, they have said that they will always support the NPC candidates," she said.

Cagayan Representative Jack Enrile, also a member of the NPC, was already part of the UNA ticket since summer.

Meantime, Legarda said whether she will finish number 1 again or not, her relationship with another frontrunner Senator Francis Escudero will still be good.

Legarda stood as one of Escudero's wedding sponsors.

"There is definitely no competition and we will help each other. We will support each other. When we're re-elected next year, and I hope that is an almost certainty, we will continue to help each other in many of our joint advocacies," she said. (Virgil Lopez/Sunnex)