Crunch time

Three weeks before the elections, the dominant Lakas-CMD has announced the nationwide mobilization of its party machinery.

Being the lead party in the coalition backed by the President of the republic and many local government executives, this machinery is the most extensive and is usually strongest during midterm elections.

The impact of party machinery on election results is something that surveys can’t gauge, according to Pulse Asia president Ronald Holmes. George Garcia, an election lawyer before he was named chairman of the Commission on Elections, says parties typically pour out the resources for poll victory about 10 days before the vote.

So it would be interesting to see if President Marcos’ Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas can achieve the sweep in the Senate race envisioned by Speaker Martin Romualdez during the recent gathering for mobilization of the Lakas-CMD machinery.

It can no longer be a full sweep since Sen. Imee Marcos has bolted the Alyansa, and it looks like her Nacionalista party mate Las Piñas Rep. Camille Villar, backed by the enormous resources of the country’s wealthiest family, has done the same.

For a Senate sweep, the administration machinery will have to dislodge several independent candidates with ambiguous loyalties in the Marcos-Duterte feud.

It also remains to be seen whether the administration machinery can dislodge Sen. Bong Go from the top spot (as per the surveys). Duterte’s tokhang enforcer Sen. Ronald dela Rosa may also land in the lower six of the Magic 12.

*      *      *

The Marcos-Romualdez camp must be politically savvy enough to realize that if Bong Go sustains his popularity trajectory through 2028, he could prove to be as dangerous as Vice President Sara Duterte to the current ruling elite.

While the VP is the daughter, Go is the anak-anakan, the adopted son and super alalay who adores his Tatay Digong, who was genuinely moved to tears when Rodrigo Duterte was bundled off on a Gulfstream jet to The Hague by those nasties of Marcos 2.0.

Go doesn’t have public fits of unhinged fury like the VP and her siblings when talking about the Marcos-Araneta-Romualdez camp. But Go also doesn’t seem to be above becoming raging mad and getting even, especially if it’s to avenge his beloved Tatay.

When the UniTeam was being cobbled together (with Ate Imee playing a prominent role), the story was that Rodrigo Duterte, who believed he could carry anyone to poll victory, wanted Go to be his successor, with daughter Sara as the running mate.

Inday Sara, who by most accounts detested Go and who at the time was estranged from her father, would have none of it. The pragmatic Digong then reportedly proposed Plan B, which was to have Inday run as president.

Maybe because the proposal also reportedly included having Go as her running mate, Inday Sara instead acceded to slide down to the VP race – but with Bongbong Marcos as the standard bearer, thus creating the formidable tandem of the Solid North and South.

The rest, as they say, is history – and probably led to the regret of the VP for not believing that father knows best.

*      *      *

If the latest survey results for the Senate race prove accurate instead of turning out to be like the disastrous 2024 pre-election polls in the US, the VP might yet survive an impeachment trial in the 20th Congress.

What doesn’t kill you will make you strong. Acquittal in the impeachment may guarantee that Daughterte will run for president in 2028.

But if she is convicted, Bong Go is emerging as an alternative for the Duterte camp.

Because of the bitterness of the UniTeam breakup, the stakes are high for BBM to ensure that his successor, even if not a political ally, will at least not be a Duterte diehard supporter. And Bong Go is a dyed-in-the-wool DDS, almost a blood relative of the former president.

If the surveys are accurate, both the VP and Go can easily trounce the only person being mentioned so far as BBM’s possible anointed successor, Martin Romualdez. The Speaker is to BBM what Mar Roxas was to Noynoy Aquino in the 2016 race – too rich and lacking in the common touch, unable to rise from the morass of abysmal ratings.

With the ratings of Romualdez inexorably heading south, there’s talk that the administration is eyeing a Tulfo for endorsement as BBM’s successor. But will the Tulfos see the need to align with the administration by 2028? No one can even guess how the brothers will vote in the VP’s impeachment trial.

*      *      *

Against the government machinery for administration bets, the Duterte camp has employed digital warfare.

It’s interesting to see Marcos 2.0 fumbling in confronting the troll farms that have targeted the administration since the falling-out with the Dutertes, and which went into overdrive following Tatay Digong’s arrest.

Suspicions that China could be behind the troll farms were confirmed at a Senate hearing yesterday, during which the National Security Council presented a contract showing a domestic PR firm called Infinitus Marketing Solutions Inc. being paid by the Chinese embassy to hire “keyboard warriors” to spread online pro-China narratives in the West Philippine Sea and fake news.

All along people thought it was the Marcos machinery that had impressively utilized digital technology for historical revisionism and disinformation leading up to that landslide win in 2022. Remember, it was even BBM who first (mis)used the national emergency messaging network to announce his candidacy for president.

Perhaps now that BBM is on the receiving end of cyber attacks, government resources can be mobilized to track down and penalize purveyors of fake news and malicious information, and prevent further attacks.

With the recent dramatic plunge in his approval and trust ratings, BBM may also have to rework his messaging. Approaching his fourth year in office, things are increasingly looking like the same old, same old.

“Bagong Pilipinas” is wearing thin. Maharlika is a costly vanity project. In terms of thievery, the 2025 national budget eclipsed the plunder of confidential funds by the VP and ex-education chief.

BBM’s forced rollout of P20-a-kilo rice, even on a limited scale in the Visayas, smacks of desperation. It will cost taxpayers P4.5 billion in subsidies, by the estimate of industry players, and could hurt farmers by pulling down the farmgate price of palay.

The elections are being seen as a proxy battle between the Marcos and Duterte camps. It’s now crunch time. The election results could determine the post-2028 fortunes of the Marcos-Romualdez clan. Surely the clan doesn’t want to see 1986 all over again.