A quick thread on where we seem to be. While every ruling coalition will have its fair share of longstanding leaders, it also means a rearrangement of the pecking order.
The faces of the ruling coalition we shouldn’t fail to forget, included a new paramount family. As the hierarchy is reconfigured the ones who do best are those who recognize it and demonstrate they know it.
Each President manages differently but there are types of President and that includes those who freely delegate their powers to those they consider able and useful subordinates. Thus factions are created, and the President had two major ones within the ranks of the old reliables.
Everyone else had to pick sides, between Go and Evasco though in the end one faction from the old reliables won the behind the scenes battle for the soul of the administration, fought out through executive orders.
But there is also another faction, a faction of one: the President’s daughter.
When the Speaker of the House grew drunk with influence and bragged even the President had better watch out as he could impeach him and worse, started to try to exert influence in Davao, she acted.
We know what famously happened, the first time in our political history the selection of a Speaker was done without presidential knowledge or approval. Here it was as much a matter of stabilizing the ruling coalition as it was the elimination of a subordinate (Alvarez).
The alliance that was demonstrated then persisted until Arroyo’s term was up; after that a safe Speaker was selected. But she’s back and it’s here that her methodical style contrasted with PDP-Laban’s bumbling methods for securing the succession.
In the present reshuffle the ones out are the old hands and close lieutenants of the President, as his daughter has taken center stage elbowing aside his advisers and formal party affiliation. Marcos Jr for his part is experiencing what his dad did to Diosdado Macapagal.
Here the two ladies seem to be the political adults in the room, recognizing they have a shared interest in maintaining the ruling coalition’s hold on power without risking an opposition win or just as bad, a Marcos Restoration which would involve settling scores for the Marcoses
At the very least the leverage of the President and his family is restored after being bumbled away by PDP-Laban with sarisfaction of putting Go in his place and forcing if it comes to that a hefty accomodation by the Marcoses. Or if not, taking the wind out of the Marcoses sails
And that’s where we seem to be as of this moment with three days to go before the battle lines are finally clearly drawn.
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Quick notes on the latest Arroyo-related brouhaha. 1. The lay of the land for the ruling coalition's interesting in that neither the prexy nor veep have pocket parties of consequence: the expected stampede was into a party in coalition, but not specifically led by the prexy.
Essentially, GMA has been credited with: 1. being instrumental in the coalition that brought Duterte victory; 2. negotiating the 2022 tandem that accomplished first successful succession since 1992. The dilemma of the third wheel, politically.
Initially, she seemed frozen out in the division of the spoils; but she started becoming a fixture in the travels of the President (to wean her away from the veep? As a foil to the President's elder sister and channel to veep? Simply to keep friends close, enemies closer?)
@lucindomino There are two factors missing in your review. First what replaced parties for many reasons was national media, a process that began in 1955 with the abolition of bloc voting which was the basic building block of the national senate scheme. The erosion dated that far back. What…
@lucindomino disguised it was changing of the rules in 1987 abandoning the 8 at a time to make it 12 at a time at the instigation of premartial law losers who wanted a chance post martial law (incidentally abandoning making the senate a continuing body and also as surveys since have revealed
@lucindomino Setting aside the tendency of voters to recall max slate of 8: so what arose as opportunity was dagsag bawas). So long as national media was strong new personalities could gain national recognition altho advantage shifted to media and showbiz personalities). But by 2013 it was…
(thread) The real question we have to ask in remembering #ML50 is less how did Marcos manage to get away with it, but rather, how did so many who knew what was coming, fail to stop it? The timeline reveals to us it was like a trainwreck in slow motion. philippinediaryproject.com/2021/08/27/a-t…
I have my own theories from reading up and listening to those who were active then. My theory is it took 1962-76 he actually did it in a lot of stages. What Makoy had going for him: every institution that could resist had cells of Marcos minded people. In media, Doroy Valencia...
in the courts, Fred Ruiz Castro, the Ilocano generals and all the colonels pissed off with the Commission on Appointments; legions of parents freaked out by hippies, priests and bishops freaked out by Reds, ditto businessmen big and small. Against him the usual intelligentsia...