Many in the political camp of President Rodrigo Duterte speculate that in the senatorial race for 2019, an administration shutout of the opposition is likely.
There is a history to this.
In 1987, after the Cory Constitution was ratified, a new Congress was set for election. The Senate was to be composed of 24 senators, and since this was to be its first election since 1971, voters had to write all 24 names in their ballots.
President Cory Aquino was at the height of her popularity, and with very few exceptions, whomever she endorsed won, both at the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the Senate, 22 of her 24 senatorial bets won, with only two coming from the opposition’s Grand Alliance. The two survivors of the clean sweep were Joseph Estrada, the ousted mayor of San Juan, and Juan Ponce Enrile, the defense minister of Marcos who led the Edsa mutiny.
But even Enrile’s victory was a cliffhanger. After a month of manual counting of ballots, he triumphed over the late Bobbit Sanchez, Cory’s appointee as labor minister.
With President Duterte’s very good net satisfaction ratings in the last Social Weather Stations survey, his political party sachems in the PDP-Laban think that history could repeat itself, and that whomever the President endorses will win.
Thus there was a clamor for a strictly PDP-Laban ticket, mostly composed of three-term congressmen. But initial reaction was tepid, and private surveys showed that the senatorial runup would be dominated by the reelectionists, only one of whom, Senate President Koko Pimentel, is from the party.
The first publicly-announced senatorial survey done by Pulse Asia came out last Friday, and it basically confirmed previous privately-commissioned surveys done earlier.
In 1987, voters had not yet gone over the euphoria of Edsa, and the prevailing sentiment was Cory, who unveiled a new Constitution, was the opposite of the authoritarian Marcos.
I attended some of the coalition meetings intended to cobble up a 24-man senatorial slate, as then-Vice President Doy Laurel’s representative. Laurel’s position was that since UNIDO was the party under which Cory and he ran during the snap elections, it should be entitled to half of the slate, with the other half given to the LPs and PDP.
I asked him privately to give me the names of those he wanted to be part of the administration slate, and I thought that only six of them had good chances of winning. So I advised what I thought was a reasonable tactic: Let’s just ask for eight candidates nominated by UNIDO, which would be difficult to deny the party. Besides, I then said, we do not have that many nationally-known candidates to field. UNIDO’s original members had already been gouged out, their loyalties compromised during the snap elections.
But the Vice President persisted with his demand. In the end, Cory insisted on her personal choices. A list of 24 names were called, and only Orly Mercado and Tito Doy’s older brother, Sotero Laurel, were included in Cory’s handpicked 24. To be sure, many identified with UNIDO and Doy Laurel until the Cory juggernaut in the snap elections, but they changed party loyalties during the campaign and after the victory.
Those UNIDO members left behind, the likes of former Senator Eva Estrada Kalaw, Rene Espina, Vicente Puyat, Homobono Adaza joined up with Juan Ponce Enrile, Joseph Estrada, Kit Tatad and others under the Grand Alliance.
Such formerly household names bit the political dust to Cory’s 22, with only Orly Mercado and Sotero Laurel representing UNIDO in the Senate. Later, even Orly left UNIDO and joined then-Senate President Jovito Salonga’s Liberal Party.
Will a Duterte-handpicked 12 orchestrate a shutout of the opposition in 2019, through a PDP-Laban wish list that eliminates reelectionists such as an independent Grace Poe, Nacionalista Cynthia Villar, LDP’s Sonny Angara, UNA’s Nancy Binay, and PMP’s JV Ejercito? Add to that Nacionalista Pia Cayetano, now deputy speaker of the House after two full terms as senator.
The results of the first quarter Ulat ng Bayan shows it is not going to be a PDP-Laban shutout, not by any stretch of the imagination.
First, we are too far removed from the heady days of the 1980s, after the fall of Marcos and the ascent of Ninoy’s widow. And we have had several elections under the 1987 Constitution which destroyed the party system and installed a personality-based political vivendi.
Thus, FVR in the 1995 mid-term elections had to merge his Lakas with the LDP, a mixed ticket of well-known names that still could not effect a shutout of the Nationalist People’s Coalition.
After the ouster of Erap in 2001, the triumphant GMA forces could not shut out Loi Estrada, nor Ping Lacson nor Ed Angara nor Greg Honasan. They still won even if they ran under the fallen Estrada’s PMP.
PNoy in 2013 had to adopt reelectionists and erstwhile political adversaries like Manny Villar’s wife Cynthia and the NP’s Alan Cayetano, apart from independents Grace Poe and Chiz Escudero. He also had to adopt into his coalition ticket Loren Legarda, who was Manny Villar’s running mate in 2010.
Vice President Jejomar Binay, on the other hand, insisted on his own neither-opposition-nor-there ticket under the newly-formed UNA, fielding his daughter Nancy, JV Ejercito and Greg Honasan among others. It was part of his party-building for 2016.
Still, no shutout for the then-popular PNoy nor for the “presumptive” president in 2016, Jejomar Binay.
So back to the original question: Can a very popular Duterte achieve a shutout for his senatorial candidates? Not if he makes it a “purist” PDP-Laban slate.
Not if he does not adopt the re-electionists who are lording it over the surveys.
Even if the current opposition led by the Liberal Party is weakened, with only reelectionist Bam Aquino seeming to have a chance at winning based on the recent survey.
Political reality will have to set in. We do not have real political parties. The 1987 Constitution virtually killed the political party system. They have become flags of convenience for the senatorial and even presidential ambitions of popular personalities, show business names included. Likewise, time has run out on effecting a revision of the 1987 Constitution—at least not until after the 2019 elections.
It is not an ideal desideratum. It is not even healthy democracy. But that is how the political field next year looks like.