The party's over

 

SUNDAY, PRESIDENT Duterte was ousted as chair of the ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan by the faction led by Sen. Manny Paquiao, installing Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III as the president’s replacement.

It was Pacquiao’s tit for the tat that the opposing clique inflicted upon him last July when he was ousted as party president and replaced by Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi.

Pacquiao remains president of PDP-Laban, his slice of it, at least.

“There is a group that wants to take over our party because they have plans in politics that are either secret or they can’t explain. They are new to our party.” So was Pimentel quoted as saying as the party’s casus belli.    

Dismissing the fission in the PDP-Laban, thus: “It is not our party that is make-or-break in the elections next year. It’s our country that’s make-or-break. The future of our nation is at stake. That is how important the next election is.”

As easily dismissed by one Melvin Matibag, secretary-general of the Cusi faction, as “a comedy.”

Matibag demolishing the son and very namesake of the PDP-Laban founder: “Sen. Koko Pimentel has no position in the PDP-Laban. He is irrelevant and he does not represent the party. His group [members] are pretenders and attention seekers.”

No, this is no mere party intramural. This is internecine strife. The PDP-Laban has just gone the way of all flesh in Philippine party politics. Not so much for lack of platform as for a surfeit of conflicted personalities with divergent interests.

Yay, party politics – that which warrants not only continuity but sustainability in the parliamentary system: think Israel’s Likud and Labor, Great Britain’s Tories and Labour too, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, and Germany’s Christian Democrat Union, to name the most prominent – is a stillborn in the Philippine political praxis. 

Something in the Filipino psyche had to be lobotomized for party politics to even have the chance of conception, more so erection, hereabouts.

The master of Philippine 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 patriotically ranted: “My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.” God bless MLQ.

Party loyalty is a contradiction in terms; 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 Atienza-Defensor on the right, Drilon-Pangilinan, et al on the left. Poor Jovy Salonga, tottering at the fulcrum in an even more recent past.

On another plane, witness how political parties hereabouts are hitched on the ebb and flow of the tides of fortune of their founders.

The Kilusang Bagong Lipunan was an invincible monolith during 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 and emerged with Fidel V. Ramos’ LakTao, that’s Lakas-Tao for you, that evolved into Lakas-NUCD-UMDP.

Joseph Estrada’s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino took the nation by storm in 1998, lost its sheen in the wake of his impeachment and subsequent resignation, only to return, not so much with a vengeance but with a squeak, in the Manila mayoralty in 2013, only to be totally drubbed by the upstart Isko Moreno in 2019.

The People’s Reform Party of Miriam Defensor Santiago proving its mettle in the battle for the presidency in 1992 giving the scare to El Tabako, virtually reduced to irrelevance in succeeding elections. It’s last whimper in 2016, with the demise of Maid Miriam.

Anyone still remember Renato de Villa’s Partido para sa Demokratikong Reporma and Lito Osmena’s Probinsya Muna Development Initiative that aspired for the presidency in 1998?

Two presidential runs of Raul Roco under Aksyon Demokratiko both ended way too short. His party in dormancy until Vico Sotto raised its standard and all that it stands for in Pasig in 2019. Wonder if new inductee to the party, the popular Isko, could soar where Roco faltered and fell. Some promise obtaining there. 

Still, and all – populist, personalist, individualist, as it is and has always been, the Philippine political experience makes a mockery of party politics. So, I postulated in a column in a long defunct local paper nearly a score of summers ago.

So, comes its validation anew with the case of PDP-Laban. Wow, I thought I just heard Nat King Cole crooning – 

The party's over
It's time to call it a day
They've burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It's time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up the piper must be paid…