Bottom feeders

AS UNCHANGING as the seasons, climate change notwithstanding: the exodus of politicos to the winning side at the end of every presidential poll.

So much for party politics, with the personality always taking primacy. All pretensions to party advocacy reduced to…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 oxymoronic 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, 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, during the hello-Garci-days-of-Glory, 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.

Come, gone, and come again is Joseph Estrada’s Partido ng Masang Pilipino.

As instant as its coming was its going for Lito Osmena’s Promdi.

A virtual party of one is Miriam Defensor’s Reform Party, runner-up in 1992, fourth placer in 1998, fifth and last in 2016.

While Aksyon Demokratiko did not die with Raul Roco, it failed to elect its single national candidate – Mark Lapid – to the Senate. Ah, yes, Aksyon provided forever Mabalacat City Mayor Boking Morales his umpteenth win.

Speaking of Boking, his dalliances with political parties are said to be as storied as those with the mothers of his kids – losing in 1992 under both Lakas and LDP, winning in 1995 under Lakas, 1998 and 2001 under Lingap-Lugud Capampangan, 2007 under Kampi, 2010 and 2013 under Kambilan and 2016 under Aksyon.

That the Philippine electoral praxis has made a mockery of party politics is an understatement.

So channeling the boy who cried wolf, I segue to these relevancies anew:

PRINCIPLED politics is a contradiction in terms: mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed, for in politics “no one acts on principles or reasons from them.”

There is that generalization arising from the fixity of our intellectual habits that deems the recurring characteristic trait of a segment of one species as representative of that species, if not of the whole genus.

Thus, taken on the whole, politicians are “…the vilest and the narrowest of sycophants and courtiers that humanity has ever known; their sole end basely to flatter and develop all popular prejudices, which, for the rest, they but vaguely share, never having consecrated one minute of their lives to reflection and observation.”

And, Monsieur Leroy Beaullieu did not even live long enough to read of the Filipino politician, writing as he was of the French kind in the 1890s. So what’s the difference between a Filipino politician and dalag? One is a voracious filth-feeding bottom dweller. The other is a fish.

Expediency and exigency, utility and interests – self-serving, vested interests, are the fundamental matters whence politics breeds.

In no single recent issue – political, naturally – are all the above “matters” most instanced than in Davao City now.