Guv: No arrangements made between Petillas, Romualdezes

LEYTE Governor Carlos Jericho Petilla clarified there were no arrangements made between his family and the Romualdezes for the gubernatorial post in 2013 elections.

The governor said in reaction to a report that he will give up his congressional bid for Leyte’s first district to ensure that his brother will run unopposed from the Romualdez camp in next year’s election.

The Romualdezes were reportedly planning to field Philip Romualdez against the governor’s younger brother Dominic Petilla.

“No agreement or arrangements have ever been made and nobody from our part and neither from their part have initiated any move on that matter,” Governor Petilla said during a recent media interview.

The governor said he does not know where the news came from, but he said that his conversations with the Romualdezes are only rare rather impersonal.

Recent news came out purportedly from a local chief executive, a close ally of the governor, who disclosed that the third-term governor will give up his plan to run for a congressional seat, if none of the Romualdezes candidate will run for the gubernatorial post.

“It doesn’t sit well that these posts are arranged only by a few people. We are talking here of the entire province. Should there be a formal agreement, it should be an agreement with all the people of Leyte and not arrangements made by only a few,” the governor said.

Earlier, Governor Petilla confirmed he is grooming his younger brother, Dominic, to run for the post and said his brother’s visits around the province have been gaining solid support from the barangays.

In 2007, he said, when his mother, former congresswoman and now Palo Mayor Remedios Petilla gave up her bid for a second term for the congressional post, it was an arrangement fixed and witnessed by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Already, this purported plan between the two political influential families in Leyte was dismissed as “baseless” by the Romualdez camp, earlier reports said.

Meanwhile, Governor Petilla admitted that President Benigno Aquino III wants him on the President’s team after 2013.

“Yes, the President has mentioned to me to be part of his team, if and only if, I will not run for any position in 2013. But it is not the other way around that I am being offered to be part of the team just so I will not seek any post after my term, the way it is being made to appear (with the arrangement issue),” the governor said. (Leyte Samar Daily Express)