“Never in the post-martial law years have the people become so polarized, with emotions so high”
NEVER to my recollection have mid-term elections been so emotionally charged and highly contentious as this.
In Cory’s time, her senatorial candidates swept the elections 22-2 with Joseph Estrada and Juan Ponce Enrile the only survivors. In 1995, FVR coalesced his Lakas-NUCD and the LDP and even drafted losing presidential and vice-presidential candidates Ramon V. Mitra and Marcelo B. Fernan into his senatorial line-up. Just three of the opposition NPC survived.
In 2001, after Pres. Erap was ousted by the EDSA Dos mob supported by the top brass of the military, GMA’s senatorial slate almost swept the elections, but for Dr. Loi Estrada, Edgardo Angara, Ping Lacson and Gringo Honasan.
But in 2017, after she won a hotly contested election in 2004 and the subsequent discovery of her conspiring with a Comelec commissioner to give her at least “a million vote margin,” GMA’s senatorial candidates miserably lost to the GO ticket. That was the only time the administration ticket did not prevail in the mid-terms.
In 2013, PNoy’s senatorial candidates prevailed, but six years after, the opposition Ocho Derecho was completely demolished in 2019, under Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.
Thus it has been said that the administration candidates almost always dominate the mid-term elections.
Despite having won the biggest majority in 2022 since the fall of his father, BbM’s Alyansa has had to put up a mixed bag of well-known political brands which is now being contested by a motley group of lesser known candidates except for re-electionists Bong Go and Bato de la Rosa.
While the surveys have consistently shown that the issues that matter most to the electorate are “politica del estomago,” the narratives have changed since fPRRD was shanghaied into the waiting arms of the ICC.
Little attention is now focused on everyday problems and proposed solutions, and if at all, these have been subsumed into the tit-for-tat on the Duterte-BbM spat, with no less than the president’s elder sister taking the cudgels for the Dutertes on an issue of the surrender of sovereignty and our judicial system.
Never in the post-martial law years have the people become so polarized, with emotions so high.
For the Dutertes who have lesser-known candidates as baggage, the stakes are quite high.
Will the result of the senatorial elections impact negatively on Rodrigo Duterte’s fate in his ICC trial?
More immediately, will an Alyansa victory impact negatively on the impeached Vice-President Sara’s forthcoming Senate trial?
The most recent horse-race surveys show that the Alyansa would likely win a majority of seats. Only Go and Bato are sure winners, with independent Ben Tulfo, two PDP’s, one pinklawan candidate, and three non-PDP but Duterte-allied candidates battling it out for five remaining slots.
The very close margins in the seventh to sixteenth-rated candidates show that it can still be anyone’s game for five, even six slots.
For Inday Sara, it is not just a counting of heads to ensure she gets 9 votes in the 20th Senate. It is also whether she can rely on her “sure” votes to be able to sway public opinion to her side, for the trial is more political than legal.
She has four sure supporters in both the remaining 19th Congress members and the sure winners in the present fight, but they belong to the “comite de silencio.”
Arrayed against her is an administration which expectedly will employ all means, fair or foul, to ensure that she is declared “politically dead.” She herself has said that “desperate people will not stop until she ends up behind bars or six feet under.” The former is doable, the latter perhaps unthinkable.
The administration has already conscripted the discredited ICC and gave them an existential trophy in the person of the former president, thus removing a formidable adversary with legions of followers.
It is left for Inday Sara to carry his torch, and she must deliver, not necessarily a victory but a respectable showing of 4 to 5 allied winners.
If PNoy, one of the most upright and parsimonious presidents in recent history, agreed to release additional PDAF to get a 20-3 vote to convict a chief justice of the Supreme Court, how much more BbM and the cabal of ambitious people around him?
Sara’s acquittal could be a political death-knell for their continued reign of unbridled power in 2028. Will the administration buy senator-judges 500 million, or a billion each, to ensure conviction?
They have spent more for AKAP, AICS, Tupad, MAIP, and other budget-mangling innovations thus far. They will certainly bid more for their continued existence.