By PRINCE GOLEZ
Manila Reporter
MANILA — Is former representative Augusto “Boboy” Syjuco Jr. of Iloilo’s 2nd District seeking the congressional post again?
Syjuco yesterday called incumbent Rep. Arcadio Gorriceta “insecure” and “afraid” for challenging him to a political contest in 2016.
“This early pa lang, Gorriceta is already showing how afraid and insecure he is of me,” Syjuco told Panay News.
He said the former Pavia, Iloilo mayor’s insecurity “is his problem, not mine.”
Will Syjuco, former director-general of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), take Gorriceta’s challenge?
“I wish I knew the answers to your questions,” he said. “I really don’t. I will go where God takes me.”
Syjuco, under the United Nationalist Alliance, ran against Gorriceta of the Liberal Party but lost by more than 20,000 votes during the mid-term election in May last year.
The other contender was Salvador “Kiting” Cabaluna III, former representative of 1-CARE party-list.
“Lapsus Calami,” a popular column in this paper, said Gorriceta wants Syjuco and Cabaluna to run against him in the 2016 election.
“The issue on who is the best and who performs well enough among us will be answered by the sovereign people through the ballots,” it quoted Gorriceta as saying.
While he is not sure about his political plans, Syjuco pointed out that public service makes him “most happy.”
He has been in public service for 17 years, according to the former congressman from Santa Barbara, Iloilo.
“I served three terms in Congress and guided my wife on her own two terms while I was a Cabinet member, and then director-general of TESDA,” he said.
“As vice president of the 1971 Constitutional Convention for two years, I am the oldest living of such officer,” he claimed.
Syjuco said he has not visited Iloilo lately because he is “busy now more than ever.”
Data from the Commission on Elections showed that Gorriceta got 56,846 votes, while Cabaluna and Syjuco got 46,140 votes and 31,818 votes, respectively, during the 2013 poll./PN
