Casiño to kick off campaign with fun run

WHILE the hands of candidates of major coalitions are to be raised by political bigwigs in their opening salvos next week, a party-list lawmaker opted to run with his supporters to kick off his campaign for the Senate.

The lone senatorial candidate of the Makabayan Coalition, Bayan Muna party-list Representative Teddy Casiño, will run from Baclaran in Parañaque City to the Senate building in Pasay City at 7 a.m. on February 12, Tuesday.

Before he filed his candidacy papers at the Commission on Elections (Comelec) last October, Casiño also ran with his supporters in the rain.

Team PNoy, a coalition of several political parties led by the ruling Liberal Party, will hold its opening salvo at the historic Plaza Miranda in Manila while the United Nationalist Alliance will kick off their campaign in vote-rich Cebu.

Casiño is confident that his name will go up in the rankings as soon as the campaign period for the midterm polls starts. He ranked 24th in the latest Pulse Asia Survey released Friday.

"The campaign period has not started yet. Naturally the incumbent senators, ex-senators and old names in Philippine politics are lording it over in terms of name recall and popularity," he said.

Re-electionists Senators Loren Legarda, Francis Escudero, and Allan Peter Cayetano shared the top spot in the Pulse Asia survey.

To help raise funds for political advertisements, Casiño and his campaigners are selling teddy bears for P200 each.

"Sa totoo lang, our biggest challenge is raising millions for TV and radio ads. This is one of the toughest hurdles an alternative candidate has to overcome so that he can reach millions of voters," Casiño admitted. (Kathrina Alvarez/Sunnex)