Bam, Kiko, Akbayan top Congress races

The surprise senatorial victories of Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan shows Filipinos’ desire for accountability.

The two never figured in pre-election surveys but emerged second and fifth in the race for 12 seats. Both come from a third force separate from the contending Bongbong Marcos and Rody Duterte camps.

Youths, 60.5 percent of voters, returned Aquino to the Senate for his consistent push for education, and Pangilinan for food adequacy.

Gen Y or Millennials aged 29-44, and Gen Z aged 18-28 voiced dismay with poor quality of instruction. As well, with inflationary food prices amid joblessness and low incomes.

“Ballots for Aquino and Pangilinan served as ‘revenge vote’ against political toxicity, corruption and empty promises,” said Stratbase Group president Dindo Manhit. “Running outside the shadows of the polarized Marcos and Duterte factions, they became symbols of principled, reformist alternatives.”

In 2022 pollsters accurately predicted the 12 senatorial winners. Not this time, when respondents picked only from lineups of the present and past presidents. Discounted were mock elections among university students that kept putting Aquino and Pangilinan at the top.

The similarly unexpected top place of party-list Akbayan shows the electorates’ wish for clean government, human rights and justice.

Aquino first ventured into politics as chairman of the National Youth Commission, then as Senate education reformist. Pangilinan, a UP student-leader, served as presidential assistant and Senate chairman for food and agricultural modernization.

Eased out of poll standings were tri-media personality Ben Tulfo and movie actor Bong Revilla.

While voters placed Erwin Tulfo at fourth place, they likely preferred only two Tulfo brothers, not three counting Ben. Raffy Tulfo, famed media solver of crime and abuse, joined the Senate in 2022.

Revilla was re-elected senator in 2019 despite a plunder rap. The Sandiganbayan convicted his chief-of-staff, but acquitted him with an order to return P124.5 million. He hasn’t done so.

Also restored to the Senate were Tito Sotto and Ping Lacson. Although with Marcos’ Alyansa ng Bagong Pilipinas, both campaigned as independents. Sotto and Lacson are known to have fended off several attempts by legislators to pad annual national budgets with pork barrels.

Sotto’s senatorial win for the fifth time is historic. He is the only senator to have done so. Before that, he, Lorenzo Tañada, and Frank Drilon were the only three to be elected senator four times.

Rodante Marcoleta’s sixth place is another marvel. Catholics supposedly comprise 80 percent of Filipinos. Perhaps they don’t know or forgot that Marcoleta as congressman filed a bill to remove the Crucifix in hospital rooms, even if Catholic-run.

The Iglesia ni Cristo endorsement carried him.

In the Magic 12 with Marcoleta are Duterte bets: top-placer Bong Go, third placer Bato Dela Rosa and 12th finisher Imee Marcos. Majority of Mindanaoans reportedly gave them and four others sympathy votes due to Duterte’s arrest and detention by the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Seventy-five percent of voters were polled to be against China’s sea aggression. But that didn’t seem to matter to Mindanaoans since pro-Beijing Duterte, former mayor of Davao City, is one of them.

Marcoleta once claimed that the West Philippine Sea is fictional. While Imee constantly criticized Philippine naval exercises with the US, but never Chinese bullying. Both disregard the fact that The Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 upheld WPS as Philippine exclusive economic zone.

Aside from Sotto, Lacson, and Erwin Tulfo, three others from Marcos’ lineup made it: Pia Cayetano, Camille Villar, and Lito Lapid. Pia and Camille will sit with their brothers Alan Cayetano and Mark Villar in the Senate.

All 12 will join a dozen remaining senators for their delayed task: to try to impeach VP Sara Duterte.

Sixteen senators are needed to convict, and nine to acquit her.

Go, Dela Rosa, Marcoleta and Imee are among the nine, along with Duterte’s PDP-Laban president Robin Padilla.

To go either for conviction or acquittal are Senate President Chiz Escudero, who delayed Sara’s trial till July 30th; Senate President pro-tempore Jinggoy Estrada, whom Duterte released from plunder detention; Alan Cayetano, who was Duterte’s 2016 VP running mate and later foreign secretary; and Mark Villar, Duterte’s former public works secretary.

The latter two can sway their sisters Pia Cayetano and Camille Villar.

All that can become moot if the ICC also arrests Go, Dela Rosa and Sara for crimes against humanity. Sara herself has disclosed that she and the two are among six others named in the prosecution’s case against her father.

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