MANILA, Philippines – The chairman of the Liberal Party (LP) is now also the party’s campaign manager for 2013.

Sen Franklin Drilon said he accepted the challenge of ensuring their party’s win and on the day of the proclamation rally, said he was confident all 12 of the administration’s senatorial hopefuls would win.

“I was asked by the President to help in the campaign and I have accepted the challenge to make all our candidates win,” he told Rappler.

He said he was approached by President Benigno Aquino III last week and Drilon said he did not think twice about the offer.

While Drilon said it was too early to talk about specific plans regarding their planned campaign, he said one thing that was for certain was they would use a new tool that would help them with their endorsements.

“The traditional rallies in the provinces we will only [have] in the major cities. We will [also] make use of the social media, new media principle,” he said.

The LP has teamed up with the Nacionalista Party (NP), Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP), party-list Akbayan, and the Nationalist People’s Coalition. Members of these parties plus 3 independent candidates make up the list of the administration’s rainbow coalition — all of whom Drilon will need to help win. The slate includes former political rivals of the President, his first cousin, and re-electionists from NP and NPC.

Drilon also emphasized that while the coalition shares 3 candidates with opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) led by Vice President Jejomar Binay, it is a “clear rule” that they cannot appear with UNA on the campaign trail.

He said such a situation would be difficult to reconcile.

“We have 12 administration candidates. siguro ang UNA could not complete their slate so what they’re doing is they’re adopting some of our candidates. We cannot prevent them from adopting some of our candidates. But we certainly find it problematic if these candidates they adopt would suddenly appear in (their) rallies because when they endorse the candidates of the other side, that means they are junking the candidates of the coalition,” he told Rappler. – Rappler.com