
Former senator Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito is officially seeking a Senate comeback as he filed his certificate of candidacy (COC) for senator on Saturday, Oct. 2.
Ejercito served as senator from 2013 to 2019. He ran again in the 2019 midterm polls but failed to get into the Magic 12.
A son of former president Joseph Ejercito-Estrada to former San Juan City mayor Guia Gomez, Ejercito is the half-brother of former senator Jinggoy Estrada, who will be also running for a Senate seat in the next year’s polls.
The former lawmaker admitted that he was not ready to run for two consecutive national polls at first.
“But after giving it much thought and looking into what is happening today especially with this pandemic, I felt that it is my obligation and my duty all the more to push the Universal Health Care Law,” Ejercito said.
If elected, he vowed to ensure the proper implementation of the measure, which he sponsored and authored while he was in Senate.
In pursuing another Senate bid, Ejercito said he had considered many factors, including the intent of his half-brother to also seek a Senate seat.
Based on his COC, Ejercito, who is running under the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), chose Estrada as an alias for his 2022 elections ballot.
He explained that Estrada is a “brand name” that “has been in the politics for the past 50 years,” adding that people in the rural areas have referred to him as JV Estrada.
“I think it’s just proper that I also use it as an alias,” Ejercito said.