Horse trading

 

"YES, NAG-UPO kami — kasama ko rin si Senate President — with Vice President Leni. At the time, kasama niya si [former] Sen. Bam Aquino.”

So, 2022 presidential pretender Sen. Ping Lacson confirmed a meeting with Vice President Leni Robredo, herself a presumed presidential timber.

“Di ko lang ma-divulge yung pinag-usapan dahil wala naman akong authority sa kanya para i-share yung aming pinagusapan. Pero nag-usap na kami,” Lacson added.

Similarly, another president-wannabe Sen. Dick Gordon: “I don’t know if I’m allowed by the Vice President, we had a chat last week. But I don’t want to say anything about what we talked about.”

Asked if they spoke about a possible “partnership” in the 2022 elections, Gordon said: “Yes, for transparency’s sake because lalabas at lalabas ‘yan. Pero hindi namin pinag-usapan kung sino ang kandidato.”

Another presidentiable, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, is reported to have met also with Robredo. This, on top of their various “meet-ups” in their joint vaccination programs for the marginalized sectors in Manila.  

Lacson. Gordon. Moreno. All have had their date with Robredo. Come now the lamentations from a spurned suitor –

“Simula January, ako/Magdalo, and later on through Tindig Pilipinas, ay nagre-request ng meeting kay VP Leni para masimulan na ang preparation. Subali’t  ayaw niya kaming i-meet dahil kasalanan daw sa Diyos nap ag-usapan ang 2022 elections habang may pandemya,” former Sen. Sonny Trillanes rued on Facebook.

The Veep’s spox, Barry Rodriguez riposted: “I’d imagine there should be an easier way to ask for a conversation than throwing a tantrum on social media, right?”

Trillanes, reports said, has not been kept out of the loop of the VP’s intent to build the “broadest unity” possible in 2022.

“Discerning” is how Robredo’s approach to her presidential bid is described. 

“The more pragmatic Vice President argues that she needs a fighting chance to push through with her presidential bid – otherwise, someone else might be a better option than her in 2022,” so it was reported. Hence, the imperative to touch base with others who are not necessarily allied with the opposition. Horse trading, it’s called, as old as, if not even older than electoral politics itself.

What is generally accepted as “par for the course” in the run-up to the elections, Trillanes considered “crossing the red line.” Convinced as he is that only Robredo has the right to the banner of the opposition.

Thus, Trillanes: “We don’t buy this pretext that she can’t win therefore we need to compromise our principles by aligning with these Duterte enablers. I don’t buy that crap.”

Principles. The senator there instantly dredging memories of columns past, this one from the long defunct Pampanga News (Jan. 19-25, 2006), excerpted:
Politics and the rule of law

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 convention, utility and interests – self-serving, vested interests, are the fundamental matters – I could not dare write principles here and desecrate the word – whence politics breeds…
Aye, where principles end, politics begins. And thrives. 
I can only weep with Trillanes.