Eastern Samar officials want the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to adopt House of Representatives Minority Leader Marcelino “Nonoy” Libanan as congressional candidate and Gov. Ben Evardone as gubernatorial candidate in the 2025 mid-term elections.
A total of 58 delegates from Eastern Samar visited Speaker Martin Romualdez at the House and tendered their manifestos urging the administration to embrace the Libanan-Evardone team-up.
The delegation included Eastern Samar’s vice governor, Maricar Goteesan, 13 provincial board members, 19 municipal mayors, and 19 association of barangay captain presidents.
Responding to the manifestos, Libanan said: “We are deeply honored and humbled by the declarations of support.”
“We – Governor Evardone and I – are determined to combine our efforts so that we can improve in a big way the living standards, social conditions, and economic opportunities for individuals and communities in Eastern Samar,” Libanan said.
Libanan is set to stage a comeback and seek Eastern Samar’s lone congressional district seat in 2025.
He represented the same district in Congress for nine years from 1998 to 2007, and was one-time provincial vice governor.
Libanan is currently 4Ps party-list representative in Congress.
Meanwhile, Evardone is set to seek his third and last term as provincial governor.
In May, Evardone resigned from the PDP Laban to join Marcos’s Partido Federal ng Pilipinas.
Apart from being Speaker and the President’s first cousin, Romualdez is also the acknowledged political leader of the entire Eastern Visayas region.