HOW FALL, er, crack the mighty?
Noisily. As the ever-erudite Ding Cervantes put it in this paper’s banner for the weekend: “Former Pres. Arroyo’s Lakas-Kampi party has continued to crack, and rather noisily, in this province where she is now congresswoman in the second district.”
It was but one party member – 3rd District Rep. Aurelio “Dong” Gonzales – that jumped ship to hitch his political star with the Nationalist People’s Coalition. Yet all the sound and fury in the wake of his defection made as though Lakas-Kampi were totally shipwrecked.
Brought to mind here is a totally different kind of sound and fury – salutatory, celebratory, tinged with an air of arrogance – swirling about Lakas-Kampi but two short years ago. Culled from what we wrote here in August 2009:
Party line
PAMPANGA IS “99.5 percent” the bailiwick of the newly merged Lakas-CMD-Kampi Party.
So enthused 2nd District Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo as 311 elected officials at all levels took their oath of office as members of the administration party last Monday before a beaming President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
“Higanteng partido (giant party),” Mikey’s enthusiasm could not be contained, notwithstanding the conspicuous absence from the oath-taking rites of notable Pampanga political leaders Senator Lito Lapid, his son former Gov. Mark Lapid, Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao, governor-in-waiting Lilia “Nanay Baby” Pineda, and 4th District Rep. Anna York Bondoc-Sagum.
Their very absence may well tell a story totally different from Mikey’s. For now though, let us indulge Mikey’s fancy.
So what’s with the “99.5 percent”?
Said Mikey: “That 0 .5 percent, we can do without that person. But he’s free to join us.” You’re a dummy if you did not know whom Mikey referred to there.
“This is a party of politicians and sectors,” Mikey said. A potent combination in winning elections there, he did not have to say.
And to the President, the devotion of the son and the obeisance of a vassal:
“We believe you…We love you. These are the generals of your army that will ensure the votes for your presidential anointee.”
Even as he admitted to some “squabbles “within the ranks, Mikey affirmed that local officials have “united for GMA.”
In union there is strength, hence there’s Union cement. Popped the corn there.
In union there is strength, hence that GMA-sealed unity among elected officials shall seal administration victory in 2010. Maybe, even some premiership for a member of parliament from Pampanga’s 2nd District thereafter.
But that is going ahead of the story.
Watching Monday’s oath-taking event and reading accounts of it pricked my sense of déjà vu: some trip down memory lane with all feeling of dread and none of nostalgia.
It’s the Marcos era there all over again.
“Higanteng partido”was the Kilusan Bagong Lipunan (KBL), the lone monolith built upon the ruins of the Liberal Party (LP) and the Nacionalista Party (NP).
Yes, Viring, we once had a two-party system here, just like in the States. Patterned after the States’, as a matter of fact: the LP, a poor clone of the Democratic Party; the NP a third-rate trying hard Grand Old Party copycat, to paraphrase Sharon there. Cuneta, the megastar that is, not the Israeli hawk Ariel.
Not only 99.5 percent but all of 100 percent was the whole Philippines a KBL bailiwick, all semblance of opposition – no matter how rag-tag – losing either the elections or life itself.
A case in point: the 1978 Batasan elections in Metro Manila where Ninoy Aquino was soundly beaten by one unknown septuagenarian named Floro.
More than “we believe you…we love you,” it was “we adore you…we glorify you” then, total obeisance to the Great Ferdinand and the Beautiful Imelda being the order of the day.
Yet, for all the power, the kingdom and the glory of Marcos’ KBL, it took but a widow in yellow to end its reign, it took but a simple housewife to sweep it to history’s dustbin.
Déjà vu, nay, some karmic cycle ominous here?
Yes, indeed, Lakas-CMD-Kampi shut out of the elections of 2010.
As parties come, so parties go. Politics pre-determined by the inescapable karmic cycle too. I remember writing ages ago, cut-and-pasted now below:
Party politics
THE PHILIPPINE political experience has made a mockery of party politics, that is the primacy of party platform over the cult of personality which is one warranty of the parliamentary system…
Something in the Filipino psyche has to be lobotomized though, for party politics to even set root hereabouts.
The master of politics himself, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, knew this by heart. Thus his immortal take on Philippine politics as “personalist, populist and individualist” upon which he founded his fuehrership, and, with his beloved Imeldific, propagated their Malakas at Maganda apotheosis.
All Filipino politicians come from the Marcosian mold of personal, popular, individual. All pretensions to party advocacy are, well, pretensions.
So Manuel Luis Quezon ranted: “My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.” God bless him.
Party loyalty is a contradiction in terms here; loyalty to the country is as true as Judas’ devotion to Christ. Where politicos are concerned.
The pre-eminence of the individual politician over his party is inherent in Philippine political history.
Thus, Nacionalista Party-Roy Wing, Liberal Party-Kalaw Wing, Liberal Party-Salonga Wing in the not-too-distant past.
Thus, a Liberal Party sundered by anti-GMA and pro-GMA flanks winging to Lito Atienza on the right and Frank Drilon on the left. Venerable old Jovy Salonga tottering at the fulcrum.
On another plane, witness how political parties here are hitched on the tides and fortunes of their founders.
The Kilusang Bagong Lipunan was an invincible monolith at the time of the Marcos dictatorship only to crumble to dust after EDSA Uno.
The sainted Cory Aquino took Ramon Mitra’s Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino to the promised land, then pulled the rug from under him and emerged with Fidel V. Ramos’ Lakas-Tao that evolved into Lakas-NUCD-UMDP and then to Lakas-CMD.
Now, where is Joseph Estrada’s Partido ng Masang Pilipino, Lito Osmena’s Promdi, Miriam Defensor’s Reform Party, and Raul Roco’s Aksyon Demokratiko?
Now, now, where’s Lakas-CMD-Kampi?
(More next issue.)
