With less than two weeks to go before the May 9 elections, Aksyon Demokratiko standard-bearer Isko Moreno Domagoso continues to show unflinching determination, saying the elections are not over till all the votes, especially those from the silent majority, have been counted.
“As Martin Luther King once said ‘if you can’t fly, run, if you can’t run, walk, if you can’t walk, crawl.’ We’ll really crawl because I really wanted to reach as many people as possible as our commitment. Just go straight to the people,” Moreno told reporters Tuesday in Kalibo, Aklan after paying a courtesy call to Governor Florencio Miraflores.
“We will continue to seek, we will seek the help of the people… and we will not stop as long as the law allows us to go around. It’s hard, but I’ll crawl, I’ll crawl. We don’t have to crawl on the asphalt, on the cement, on the farm, just reach the people, just listen to us, give us a chance to see them,” Moreno said.
He added that “it’s a painstaking process, physically challenging but, those challenges are less important than the challenges that people face and that people will face, the expensive goods, expensive electricity, expensive crude oil, insecurity in housing, when you get sick there risk. Work, above all. These are the things important to our people, and these, I’m going to address.”
“If you want peace of mind, anyway you know me to work in the government, and you already know my goal in the government – minimum basic needs – Doc Willie and I will take you through this pandemic. So I was just there. If you want peace of mind, I am available. I can be an option,” he said.
Moreno said the warm and sincere show of support he gets from the “silent majority” wherever he and Team Isko goes throughout the country further cements his resolve to fight for them till the very end.
Moreno is no stranger to being a political underdog since this was the story of his life ever since he became a Manila City councilor in 1998.
This is the reason why Moreno is optimistic he could pull a surprise win in the presidential race despite his being in third-place standing in the latest pre-election surveys.
The 47-year-old presidential candidate experienced a similar feat in the 2019 elections, when he defeated former president and then-incumbent Manila City Mayor Joseph “Erap” Estrada.
“I was also number 3 in the survey then. On election day, I got 51 percent of the votes because the man was scared, he just kept his vote,” the youngest elected Manila city mayor recounted.
Moreno said he hopes history would repeat itself this year, when he is vying for the highest position in the land.
Moreno told reporters here that he also drawing inspiration from the 1948 US presidential elections, where incumbent President Harry Truman pulled an upset victory against New York Governor Thomas Dewey, who was the survey frontrunner.
“If we all believe that history repeats itself, Gov. Dewey has been leading the survey for 1 year, even to the point that Chicago Tribune printed the newspaper for the following day (election day) that Dewey won,” Moreno pointed out.
“But it turned out that the man was just quiet. The next day, the winner was Truman,” Moreno said.
Just like how he scavenged for leftovers when he was still a young basurero in Tondo, Moreno said he is using the same vigor in scouring the Philippines for undecided voters who he believes could turn around the results of the elections in his favor.
Even though former Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Leni Robredo have cornered majority of political endorsements from incumbent local officials, Moreno said that he is still hopeful based on how he and his Aksyon Demokratiko slate are welcomed by governors and mayors in their provincial sorties.
In his visit to the provincial capitol of Aklan—part of the Panay group of islands in Western Visayas which has long been a bailiwick of the Liberal Party – c—apitol officials and employees flocked around Moreno, shrieking and taking pictures as the Manila Mayor made his way to the office of Gov. Florencio Miraflores.
Moreno had earlier expressed optimism that the “silent majority” from the lower middle class as well as the urban and rural poor will deliver the crucial votes on May 9 and make him the 17th President of the Republic.
Moreno had said that the tens of thousands of people that he directly met and shook hands in various provincial sorties does not jibe with pre-election survey results made by major polling firms that tend to show his numbers at a far third from the front runner.