This early, the ruling Liberal Party and the opposition United Nationalist Alliance have discounted the fielding of common candidates as they announced a short list of their respective senatorial slates for the 2016 elections.
The LP will field Presidential Assistant on Food Security and former senator Francisco Pangilinan, former senator Panfilo Lacson, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, Senate President Franklin Drilon, reelectionist Senators Ralph Recto and Teofisto Guingona III.
UNA on the other hand, has an equally strong slate with Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez, Senator Tito Sotto, Sarangani Rep. and boxing icon Manny Pacquiao, Buhay Party List Rep. Lito Atienza, former senator Miguel Zubiri and Valenzuela Rep.Sherwin Gatchalian.
With a campaign chest bursting at the seams, the Liberal Party most likely will be able to complete a 12-man ticket to remain in control of the Senate if UNA is unable to assemble a full senatorial slate. The LP’s main problem is the winnability of Mar Roxas, its presumptive standard-bearer for president who’s not climbing in the poll surveys.
Despite its resources, the administration is still finding it difficult to complete a senatorial roster. Why? Normally, an outgoing administration would be tapping its Cabinet members for the Senate. But poor performance and allegations of corruption against some Cabinet members hamper their being harnessed in the senatorial ticket. Take for example, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala who’s being linked to the garlic and rice smuggling scandal; Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman who is being asked to account for millions of funds in the Conditional Cash Transfer to the poor; Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla who mishandled the electricity power crisis and Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya whose incompetence showed in running the Metro Rail Transit. That’s four public officials with a name recall among voters. The recall, however, comes with expletives instead of a good image.
The possibility that President Benigno Aquino III would convince Senator Grace Poe to run as LP presidential candidate cannot be discounted with Mar Roxas stepping aside once more in the interest of the party. A Poe-Roxas tandem in 2016 could be in the works. Or Mar Roxas might just opt to regain his Senate seat where he has a better chance of winning.
Who would then be Jejomar Binay’s vice presidential running mate? Binay said he prefers a working vice president if he cannot win Grace Poe over to UNA. That might just open doors for Lito Atienza whose administrative experience as three-term mayor of Manila and former National Housing Authority manager fits Binay’s job requirement for a working vice president.
Atienza, however, is looking at other options. He might just run for mayor of Manila again in the event the Supreme Court rules against incumbent Joseph Estrada from holding public office. The word is that the SC is just about ready to promulgate a decision. The complaint filed by a citizens group was based on the contentious clause on the pardon granted Estrada by former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo that he cannot seek an elective post nor hold public office after his conviction of plunder in connection with the tobacco excise tax and jueteng payola.
European backlash vs. Islam
The Islamist gunmen who boldly barged into a newspaper office in Paris and massacred 12 journalists have ignited a backlash in European countries hosting large Muslim communities. The masked assassins singled out the editor and cartoonists of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and shot them on the spot to trigger a new wave of xenophobia and morbid fear of Islam.
The unfurling and display of St. George’s flags reminiscent of the Crusades against Islam in the Middle Ages may not have the makings of a Holy War but it widens further the centuries-old cultural divide between Christians and Muslims.
The Paris carnage can only fan contempt and discrimination against Arabs living in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and even neutral Switzerland. The outrage sweeping Europe over the Paris attack has not been felt since Al Qaeda terrorists bombed underground trains and street buses in London in 2005 and the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001.
The attack struck a sensitive chord in France’s core values of Egalite, Fraternite, and Liberte – fundamental rights Europe and the Western world share together with freedom of the press and free speech. The Paris satirical magazine had incurred the ire of the Muslims with its irreverent and caricature depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, an act considered blasphemous by Islam. A few years back, its offices was firebombed for reprinting a Danish newspaper’s editorial cartoons of the Muslim prophet.
Repercussion may not be visceral as the violence shown by Christian Serbs against Muslims in Albania, Bosnia-Herzogovina and Croatia during the bloody ethnic-cleansing war in the Balkans in the late nineties. But retaliation by the European Union could come in the form of sanctions in trade, suspension of development assistance and stricter immigration rules to stem the tide of Arab and African immigrants. France alone has six million Arab and African immigrants embedded in its population of 66 million.