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Friday, March 29, 2024

Big fat irony

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ANYONE with a knowledge of recent history will appreciate just how ironic it was for Senate President Franklin Drilon to file a bill seeking to penalize political turncoats.

Drilon, no doubt, was motivated by the recent defeat at the polls of the presidential candidate of his Liberal Party—and the ensuing hemorrhage of members from the erstwhile ruling party to President Rodrigo Duterte’s winning PDP-Laban.

While some in the LP saw the defections as understandable acts of political survival, Drilon would have none of it. His bill would either stem the exodus or make the turncoats pay.

“It is about time that we pass a measure that will institutionalize and strengthen political parties as pillars of the country’s democratic system,” Drilon declared as he filed Senate Bill No. 226 or the Political Party System Act.

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In the past, Drilon said, attempts to reform political parties “away from the concept of traditional politics” had failed because there was no legal institutional framework to govern political parties.

Drilon said his bill was aimed at promoting party loyalty, discipline and adherence to ideological principles, platforms and programs.

“Most political aspirants change political parties for convenience, rather than because of conviction. This only shows the lack of ideological commitment of the members of party because they choose parties based on the rise and fall of the tide of opportunity,” the Senate president said.

Under the Drilon bill, political turncoats will be disallowed from running under any political party for any elective position in the next succeeding election after changing affiliations.

They will also refund any amounts they received from their political party, including a 25 percent surchage.

“Political parties in our country are normally used as political vehicles to win an election. The political party system is centered on personalities rather than ideology and political platform,” Drilon declared. “Political turncoatism should never be encouraged nor tolerated.”

In championing his bill, however, Drilon may have overlooked the biblical admonition that it is he who is without sin that should cast the first stone.

Loyalty, if we go by his track record, has not been one of Senator Drilon’s strong suits.

In 1995, Drilon ran and won under the Lakas-Laban coalition, but bolted Lakas in 1998 to join the Laban ng Makabayang Masang Pilipino and supported Joseph Estrada in the presidential race. While he was installed as Senate president in July 2000, he turned on Estrada in October of the same year. In 2001, he was one of the senators who voted in favor of opening a second bank envelope that was expected to pin President Estrada down in his impeachment proceedings—then cried when he was outvoted and impeachment lawyers walked out of the session hall in protest.

Returning to the Senate presidency in July 2001 after Estrada’s ouster, Drilon joined the Liberal Party in 2003.

He actively supported President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo when she sought a fresh mandate in 2004, but broke with her in 2005 when her election to office was stained by allegations of cheating.

On July 8, 2005, Drilon joined the so-called Hyatt 10—Arroyo Cabinet members who resigned to protest the alleged cheating—and demanded that she resign. The turnaround must be among the most abrupt in Philippine political history: just a few days before that, he famously told Mrs. Arroyo at a rally in his hometown of Iloilo that if Manila didn’t want her, she should consider moving Malacañang to Iloilo “where we love you.”

As far as ironies go, that’s a big, fat one.

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