“As is their usual wont, all the oligarch-owned parties, NP, NPC, NUP, swear allegiance, if temporary, to the newly-minted Bagong Pilipinas ruling coalition”
Turncoatism has indeed become the new normal in Philippine politics.
Nobody expected Rodrigo Roa Duterte to run for president in 2014. Ensconced in his Davao City politics, most everybody thought he would stray no farther than his “kingdom.”
But in 2014, corruption charges were leveled against the presidential frontrunner, then Vice President Jejomar Binay, whose survey numbers were almost three times higher than the likely LP standard bearer, Manuel A. Roxas II.
The slow meltdown of the Binay brand began. Yet the Roxas numbers did not benefit much from the destruction of the Makati family’s brand.
Two camps believed the opportunity was theirs to grab: Grace Poe and Chiz Escudero on the one hand; and believers of the seemingly disinterested and uncertain Duterte.
Poe declared herself for president in Sept. 2015, with Chiz as her running-mate. Duterte on the other hand, refused to file his candidacy with the Comelec until the last hour.
To remedy the situation, his supporters sought the PDP-Laban, then headed by the father and son team of the Pimentels, a marginalized party despite its active opposition to martial rule.
They got a CoC for Martin Dino, whose intention was to run in Pasay City, and filed it as a CoC for president. PDP thus became the Davao mayor’s accidental vehicle for his rendezvous with destiny.
Duterte was packaged as the Courage and Compassion (Tapang at Malasakit) candidate, with Davao City’s peace and order plus good governance as proof of Competence.
The candidates Roxas and Binay relied on their political machinery and touted their experience, while Grace Poe anchored her candidacy on “masa” sentiments over the departed King of Philippine movies.
In the end, Duterte won with 16 million votes, six million more than second placer Roxas, the anointed of outgoing President Benigno S. Aquino III.
The turncoat phenomenon began once more, spearheaded by then House Speaker Pantaleon “Bebot” Alvarez, with the oligarch-sponsored parties, namely NP, NPC and NUP in coalition with the ruling PDP-Laban, while the decimated LP along with Akbayan and some members of the party-list progressive blocs constituted the marginal opposition.
Duterte was immensely popular as president, his approval ratings as high when he began as when he was in the twilight of his presidency.
Such high approval ratings would have made his endorsement of a chosen successor sail to victory and safeguard continuity of his brand, along with his accidental party, the PDP-Laban.
But Duterte chose not to have a clear succession plan.
His daughter Sara, with whom he had a strained relationship, chose to run as the vice-president of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., despite her father’s public description of him as a “spoiled brat” laced with charges of drug addiction.
When the political marriage of BbM and ISD was announced, it was, in the words of their ardent supporter, Jinggoy Estrada, “game over.” He was proven right.
So now we are all witnesses to the permanence of turncoatism in our political praxis.
The revivified Lakas party headed by Speaker Martin G. Romualdez, the president’s first cousin, has more than a third of the HoR as members, and more than a half of LGU officials.
The vehicle again accidentally used by candidate Marcos Jr., the Partido Federal, is likewise growing in numbers. Choose your card, Lakas or Federal, is the current administration call to our trapos.
As is their usual wont, all the oligarch-owned parties, NP, NPC, NUP, swear allegiance, if temporary, to the newly-minted Bagong Pilipinas ruling coalition.
Meanwhile, the LPs, derided as yellows and kakampinks, remain in the fringes, as vocal opposition to Duterte, with rather muted stand against Marcos, while Duterte’s PDP, minus the Laban, has been marginalized with increasing desertions.
Worse, the incumbent vice president, Inday Sara, without whose “marriage” to PBbM that 2022 “Uniteam” victory may not have materialized, is now facing the obviously planned and calibrated demolition of both persona and political brand.
The system is f…ed, partly because greedy trapos have capitalized on a confused and confusing 1987 Constitution, foisting their family dynasties on an easily bought and fooled electorate, while making a business out of politics.
Unless we cut that “Gordian Knot” like Alexander did on his path to greatness, slay the dynasties, and re-establish a presidential form with a functioning two-party system, or institute a French model parliamentary government, the phenomenon started by Diosdado P. Macapagal in 1962 will become a permanent fixture of our completely un-principled, totally decrepit political praxis.
