The winnowing

In the wake of political observers’ fascination over the "change" mania sweeping America’s political landscape, Golez proposes a modified version of the "primaries" that now engage the Democratic and Republican parties prior to their conventions sometime June, and national elections on November this year.

Modified because we do not have a two-party system, unlike America, whose presidential system we copied, but with a quaint multi-party set-up that has caused deterioration into personality politics since 1987 when we rushed our "return" to formal democracy. As a result of the incompatible mix of presidential system with a parliamentary party framework, the formal institutions of our democracy have since descended into the politics of feudalism. We have a plethora of alleged political parties which are in truth nothing more than gangs, a political "barkadahan" set up for the convenience of its major players, with neither genuine ideology nor vision.

Kampi is Gloria’s gang of sip-sips and opportunists. She established it to launch a presidential run in 1998, but was forced to sleep-in with Lakas when she agreed to be the vice-presidential candidate of Jose de Venecia. She resurrected it through Ronaldo Puno and Luis Villafuerte, the acolytes of her husband Mike, in 2004. Some of the Kampi members used to line up for Erap’s short-lived Lammp, which incorporated his own personal party called Partido ng Masang Pilipino. Other Kampi’s used to worship FVR when his Lakas was malakas.

Lakas began as a motley group of LDP separatists in the wake of FVR’s defeat in the convention of that once humongous party of trapos in 1991. But FVR with his rag-tag group of a dozen Lakas-NUCD leaders won the closely-contested 1992 elections, and became the party in power for six uninterrupted years. LDP gradually declined and was forced to coalesce with Erap’s PMP and Danding’s NPC to form a Lammp coalition for the 1998 elections that a newly-elected President Erap hardly took serious interest in fortifying. In the wake of his trouncing Lakas’ champion, Speaker Joe de Venecia in 1998, fifty Lakas members in Congress suddenly swore in to Lammp, and managed to elect Manny Villar, a Lakas stalwart turned Lammp member, as Speaker. Two years and five months later, Villar and his Lakas-turned-Lammp congressmen impeached the Erap who had taken them into his fold. At that moment, Lammp died, and Erap’s presidency was gasping for survival, eventually to be given the coup de grace in Edsa Dos, when his handpicked CSAFP, Angelo Reyes, gave salute to a "new" commander-in-chief.

With Erap’s ouster, Doña Gloria consolidated political power first through coalition-building, with her, as suprema, and her husband Jose Miguel as caja de hierro. The coalition included Lakas, the Liberal Party, then still united and singing hosannas to Doña Gloria, the Nationalist People’s Coalition of Danding Cojuangco, with a few "recalcitrants" still holding "Erap pa rin" flaglets, a fringe party called PDSP, and independents in the Senate who grouped themselves into a Wednesday dinner gang, namely Noli de Castro, Joker Arroyo, Ralph Recto, Kiko Pangilinan, and Manny Villar.

Setting his sights on the 2010 plum when the Gloria he supported for six long years would be gone (that’s an assumption), Villar acquired a "shell" party with a grand old history, the Nacionalista Party, from the then dying Salvador Laurel in 2003. After his Gloria won in 2004, he worked his way through nimble brinkmanship and purveyed his Nacionalista Party of a dozen members into an ally of the opposition under Erap. Through such nimble footwork, Villar, now identified with the opposition, was able to salvage his re-election, while his friend Ralph Recto floundered in defeat, identified as he chose to be with Doña Gloria.

Erap in prison has had to cobble along through momentary coalitions, just to provide a flag of convenience for anyone who needed a standard to run against whoever ran under GMA’s banners. First there was the hastily-formed Pwersa ng Masa coalition in 2001, then the United Opposition (Nagkaisang Oposisyon) that Angara, Sotto and Oreta marshaled for FPJ in 2004, which later metamorphosed into the so-called Genuine Opposition, minus the three, and this time with Jojo Binay as captain. The Angara-Sotto-Oreta trio defected to the Doña’s side, and the once humongous Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino has transmogrified into a family affair headquartered in Baler.

This has been such a lengthy digression from the topic of Roy Golez’ suggested winnowing process. The history of Philippine political parties ante-Marcos and the succeeding barkadahan they have become should fit instead into a chapter or two of a book I should write in time.

Golez welcomes the early pre-occupation of media and the public with the 2010 elections, as an opportunity for the public to winnow the chaff from true grain, in choosing who should lead the nation in a post-Gloria era (again, assuming she leaves quietly into the night).

Right now, the public opinion surveys have identified the following "presidentiables": Senator Loren Legarda of Makati, a former broadcast journalist with roots in Antique and several other provinces where her forebears have lived, affiliated with NPC since 2007, LDP-UNO in 2004, and Lakas in 2001 when she first won as senator; Vice-President Noli de Castro of Quezon City, also a newscaster from the same ABS-CBN from where Loren sprang, with roots in Mindoro Oriental, elected as senator under Erap’s Pwersa ng Masa coalition only for purposes of Comelec identification, and "independent" by choice, although he won as vice-president in 2004, under Gloria’s 4-K coalition; Senator Ping Lacson of Cavite, the highly acclaimed PNP chief for short 14 months under Erap, with ancestral roots in Iloilo, who entered politics as LDP in 2001, was removed by Ed Angara from his LDP in 2004 when Lacson ran for president, and has remained an oppositionist till the present, having won re-election as part of GO last year; and Senator Francis Escudero of the Nationalist People’s Coalition of Danding Cojuangco, who ran and won under the GO coalition last year, while his party mates, but for Legarda and himself, supported Gloria’s Team Unity. These four are considered front-runners by virtue of their double-digit survey ratings as of the end of 2007.

Then there are Senate President Manuel Villar of Las Piñas by affinity to the wealthy, landed Aguilar clan, real estate tycoon with roots in Iloilo and Bataan, originally Lakas, then Lammp, then independent, now the president of the Nacionalista Party, and Senator Manuel A. Roxas of Cubao, former investment banker descended from the wealthy Aranetas of Negros Occidental sugar barony and owners of Cubao, and the politically steeped Roxases of Capiz, the new president of a divided Liberal Party, its four senators identifying with the opposition, while most of its congressmen and governors sing to the Boss Woman’s "ate ku pung sing-sing". The two are likewise considered "front-runners" despite single-digit survey performance in 2007, because they command "compact" political parties with pre-martial law history.

Then you have, in the order of their low single-digit performance in the 2007 surveys: Senator Richard Gordon of Olongapo City, with roots in the US of A, Marikina and Pampanga, who started off as a Nacionalista, subsumed under the Marcos KBL, and is now party-less, until he formed of late a political movement called Bagumbayan; MMDA Chair Bayani Fernando of Marikina and Pasig, a construction magnate, who first ran under a local movement as mayor of Marikina, then joined Lakas in FVR’s time. There is Mayor Sonny Belmonte of Quezon City, whose family owns the Philippine Star, with roots in Baguio and Nueva Ecija, who was LDP under Cory, later Lakas under FVR and ever since.

In the first round of surveys for 2008, the pollsters would have to add several other names already floated, either by themselves or their groups, namely: Mayor Jejomar Binay of Makati City, whose immediate forebears are from Batangas, president of the PDP-Laban; Senator Jinggoy Estrada of San Juan in Metro Manila, with roots in Laguna and Zambales, of the Partido ng Masang Pilipino; National Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro of Tarlac and Negros Occidental, whose uncle is Eduardo Cojuangco, chairman emeritus of the Nationalist People’s Coalition and San Miguel Corporation.

That’s already a dozen star-struck dreamers hoping to next lord it over the stinking palace beside the stinking river. But wait.

Yung dagdag…yung dagdag. And definitely not saling-ket, or saling-pusa. There’s President Erap, and if he comes in, President FVR too!

The pollsters cannot exclude them in the next round, because otherwise, the numbers they report would not reflect political realities, no final decision having been made as to the constitutionality of their running once more. That’s fourteen names.

It would be most interesting to find out whose 2007 survey votes Erap’s entry would affect. A possible research design could exclude Erap and FVR first, and then include a list where the two are named as possible candidates.

So how does the country winnow, friend Roy? (To be continued)