Former Speaker Jose de Venecia, after describing Defense Secretary Gilberto A. Teodoro, Jr. as “highly qualified” for the presidency, has said he has not decided yet whether to support former Senate President Manuel Villar, Jr. of the Nacionalista Party or Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino of the Liberal Party for next year’s presidential polls.

Both Aquino and Villar are “good choices,” according to him.

But while he is visibly impressed by Gibo Teodoro’s qualifications as a former three-term congressman at the time De Venecia was House Speaker, he appears dissuaded to indorse him all because Teodoro is the favored bet of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo under the merged Lakas-Kampi-CMD party.

The president, as everybody knows, is not only the political nemesis of the former Speaker – they are vipers in each other’s bosom, so to speak.

De Venecia, in fact, is doing everything to nullify what he considers the anomalous merger of Lakas-CMD the party he founded, with the President’s own Kampi.

The Commission on Elections has recently turned down the petition filed by the De Venecia group for the rejection of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD political accreditation.

Now Joe de Venecia is at it again: He is reported to be laying the groundwork for a new “rainbow coalition.”

That was the same beginning of the Lakas-CMD – I mean the rainbow coalition. Mention of rainbow coalition and immediately you see De Venecia in your mind, smiling.

The plan, according to the former Speaker’s people, is to form a new rainbow coalition among opposition groups with the support of the House leaders who have opted to remain with the original Lakas-CMD and thus impair and ultimately render inutile the merged Lakas-Kampi-CMD.

Once formed, the new coalition is expected to rally behind former Senate President Manuel Villar of the Nacionalista Party or work for Liberal Party standard bearer Noynoy Aquino for the 2010 presidential elections.

He has described both contenders as “good choices.”

Even so, De Venecia expressed deference to Senator Francis Escudero’s “competence” and as a “good presidential candidate” of the Nationalist People’s Coalition.

All these seem to coincide with the results of the surveys conducted lately by the Social Weather Station where Aquino got the top place with 60% of the votes followed by Villar, 37% -- and the rest with Escudero’s 15%, and Teodoro’s 4%.

But in the House of Representatives it self where a two-day mock elections were held under the auspices of the regular congressional reporters, Gibo Teodoro got a total of 90 or 58.8 percent of the votes cast by the members of Congress themselves.

Manny Villar who was House Speaker before his election to the Senate, got 25 votes for the second place, and Chiz Escudero, also a former House member, took the third place with 20 votes.

The fourth place was Noynoy Aquino, another former House leader, who got seven votes.

Despite the disparities in their respective votes, Ramon Casiple of the Consortium on Electoral Reforms, thinks the 2010 contest for the presidency will be between Gibo Teodoro and Noynoy Aquino.

Casiple, a known political analyst, sees Teodoro’s “convincing victory” at the House mock elections as “indication he will closely contest the 2010 presidential race with Aquino” whom he credits for huge leads in popular surveys.

That’s a vivid rebuke to survey results that put Teodoro at the tail end of their reports.

(zhern_218@yahoo.com)