Scapegoating

There seems to be some hesitation to fully examine the results of the last elections in the mainstream media channels. This is because the results are damning for the sitting administration.

Returning senator Panfilo Lacson broke the studied silence. He attributed the miserable performance of the pro-administration slate to the campaign organization’s failure to deliver – notwithstanding its immense advantage in funding and logistics.

There is some ground for this conclusion.

The Alyansa candidates failed to rally the votes in the Visayas and Mindanao – including Eastern Visayas, supposedly the bailiwick of Speaker Martin Romualdez. This proved especially fatal for two Alyansa candidates – Abby Binay and BenHur Abalos – who built their political careers as local executives in the NCR and had limited reach in the south. They may have the competence to serve in the Senate. But they need a strong national campaign organization to get there.

There is an argument to be made here for reconfiguring Senate representation. For as long as elections for seats in this chamber are at large, the cost of campaigning will be prohibitive and celebrities with high name-recall will enjoy a premium.

Sensing he will be scapegoated for the miserable performance of the Alyansa candidates, Toby Tiangco called for a broader examination of the poll numbers. He blamed the political players behind the impeachment move of Sara Duterte as the ultimate culprits. The Alyansa internal surveys, according to the coalition’s campaign manager, showed a dramatic erosion of support in Mindanao since late last year, after the House impeachment moves.

The situation was so bad, said Tiangco, that local Mindanao politicians avoided endorsing the Alyansa for fear of a backlash from their own voters. The pro-Duterte candidates of the PDP-Laban performed exceedingly well across Mindanao. Boxing icon Manny Pacquiao could not even deliver in his home region.

Ironically, the politicians who played frontline roles in the impeachment thought this will be politically profitable for them. The congressmen who figured prominently in the abusive “quad comm” hearings were nearly wiped out. The party-list groups identified with the CPP-NPA were rejected by the voters. The whole enterprise backfired. 

The trend became more pronounced after Rodrigo Duterte was arrested and exported to the ICC. The event sparked a strong emotional reaction from many voters.

Camille Villar and Imee Marcos made it to the lower end of the win column. The strong endorsement they won from Sara Duterte delivered the Visayas and Mindanao votes that mattered. So did the endorsement of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC). Recall that the bloc-voting sect mounted a million-strong rally last January to register their objection to the impeachment of Sara.

The short-sighted political players forgot that PRRD exited the presidency with the highest approval ratings ever. A large pool of political goodwill for him remains, conserved along ethnolinguistics lines. Observe how well Duterte lieutenants Bong Go and Bato Dela Rosa performed in the Senate race, how many votes the Duterte Youth attracted and how convincingly Pam Baricuatro ended Gwen Garcia’s political career.

Garcia, whose daughter serves in the Marcos Cabinet, endorsed the Alyansa candidates. That was hubris in action, defying the pro-Duterte disposition of her constituency. Her candidacy for Cebu governor simply was doomed.

Baricuatro was not a seasoned political player. But she was endorsed by Rodrigo Duterte. That mattered.

The Sara impeachment is now a political hot potato that no one really wants to touch. According to one lawyer, the Senate may invoke a simple technicality to return the impeachment to the House. Even if the trial proceeds, there seems to be enough votes to redeem the Vice President. Remember that impeachment is principally a political act.

 Chel Diokno and Leila de Lima may boost the House prosecution panel with some badly needed lawyerly skills. But that may not matter in the larger politics of its all: Sara, after all, entrenched her position as the leading presidential candidate for 2028. No one even comes close.

A lame duck sitting president will not have enough political capital, not to mention real funding, to overdetermine the Senate. When Noynoy Aquino managed to have Chief Justice Renato Corona (who opposed a larger payout for Hacienda Luisita) convicted in the Senate, he needed billions for a Disbursement Acceleration Program to properly incline the impeachment jurors. Selling rotting rice at P20 per kilo will not cut it.

Three candidates – Bam Aquino, Kiko Pangilinan and Rodante Marcoleta – dramatically broke from the margins to the win-column – defying the pre-election surveys.

Bam and Kiko skillfully surfed the gigantic Marcos-Duterte clash, generated enough TikTok content to win younger voters, skirted controversial policy issues and, many claim, exaggerated their legislative accomplishments to get the votes they needed.

There seems to be a tendency to downplay the INC’s endorsement of Bam Aquino among his supporters. That endorsement matters. It was the same endorsement that brought someone with the unlikely name of Rodante Marcoleta to the upper half of the win column.

What concession did Aquino make to win that endorsement? He probably will not tell.

Marcoleta deserves even closer examination. He is apparently the first INC member to perform this well in a senatorial contest. It is likely his sect leveraged its coveted endorsement of local candidates to gather command votes for their member.

The philosopher Karl Popper famously said: “He who eats the fruit of knowledge will never enter paradise.” The INC now knows.