Defense chief has got ads, forum, march, oath-taking—all within a week

He’s not filed his certificate of candidacy, and definitely not chosen yet as standard bearer of his adoptive party, but Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro is one busy body promoting his aspirations for the presidency.

Last Sunday, the ruling party Lakas-Kampi-CMD put out an advertisement in the Philippine Star announcing that in the coming week, Teodoro would be taking his oath as party member. (He bolted his original party, chaired by his uncle Danding Cojuangco, after they disagreed on certain things.)

While for the most part the ad enumerated the chairmen of its local chapters nationwide, it anchored on Teodoro’s entry as signaling the start of the party’s consolidation efforts for 2010. We tried getting a clarification from Lakas-Kampi on whether this ad indicates the party’s preference for Teodoro despite its own acknowledgment that there’s a Bayani Fernando and a Noli de Castro also trying to woo party support. We didn’t get a reply until posting time.

The ad says the oath taking will take place tomorrow, July 24, at the Lakas-Kampi HQ in Mandaluyong, to be followed by “a grand rally” and press conference at Club Filipino in Greenhills.

Teodoro announced in his Facebook account that this particular Friday “will be a milestone for national attention” and that his “multi-sectoral supporters will be converging @ McDonald's Greenhills branch as they prepare to march toward nearby Club Filipino with the man himself.”

The fastfood branch is near Xavier School, the exclusive, mostly Chinese boys’ school where Teodoro graduated in high school. On July 22, Teodoro returned to his alma mater for a forum where he “unveiled” his “vision” for “a new, reinvigorated, sustainable Philippine nation”—as another newspaper ad said this week.

We’ll see if Lakas’s supposedly five-million strong membership and the networks of the “multi-sectoral supporters” can bring a below-1-percenter in surveys to the top.

The Inside Track is Newsbreak's intelligencer section. It features the latest buzz on juicy political and business goings on.   

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