Goodbye, Lakas!

Some mediamen friends of mine recently sought my opinion on why Vice President Sara Duterte Carpio has resigned from Lakas-CMD. To them, any information I could share would be useful for their own assessment of the developing political scene. How humbling an experience it was for me to be so asked. They assumed that because I have been a member of the party since 1998, I might have some unpublicized insights known only to partymates. I answered those queries in all candidness.

Ordinary partymen, like me, are not privy to big issues. The resignation of a high-ranking officer of the party who happens to be the country’s number 2 highest official is more than just a big issue. Any time such a delicate topic arises, it is treated only within the deepest recesses of the party organization and whenever possible kept away from public view. Honestly, I personally know of no reason predicating Vice President Sara’s leaving Lakas. But, it does mean we, party soldiers, do not have our individual thoughts on this event.

Permit me, just the same, to put forth my own perception. Naturally, it is biased. I am not at all surprised by the vice president’s move. Even at the start, I already entertained the apprehensive feeling that her joining Lakas-CMD was a matter of selfish personal convenience and opportunism and, at the slightest chance, she would leave the party. Of course like all opportunists, she carefully garbed her entry to the party with somewhat acceptable rhetoric.

Sara’s eventual deserting Lakas confirmed my earlier apprehension. Why do I say that? We must remember that shortly after she filed her certificate of candidacy for mayor of Davao City, she reportedly abandoned Hugpong, the regional political party she organized years earlier. To found her Hugpong, she must have written its political philosophy expressive of her deep-seated beliefs in how to run a government and authored the party’s vision/mission.

Long before the 2022 national elections, then Mayor Inday Sara went around the country recruiting members for her Hugpong. Wherever she went, she expounded on the ideals of her party and given her irresistible charm, hundreds were converted to her political cause. But, why was it that in a snap of her fingers, she left her baby and crossed over to Lakas to become a candidate for vice president? When she joined us in Lakas, she did not know the ideals we cherish and the principles we uphold. There were only about two days from the time she trashed her Hugpong colors and donned the Lakas uniform. Two days to change political thoughts! If she, in her crash indoctrination, learned in so short a time the profundity of the governance tenets of Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats, she must have conversely admitted that the principles that bound Hugpong with, the very precepts she wrote, were necessarily of inferior applicability.

Here is more. We believe that Inday Sara while still Davao City began angling for the presidency of the land with the early political noise orchestrated by her father. Two things hindered her. Firstly, Hugpong was not big enough to carry her candidacy. She needed a bigger vehicle and she saw it not in PDP-Laban that was rocked by internal wrangling. Secondly, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. seemed ahead of her. So, she solved her first problem by joining Lakas, a party with national following and settled for the vice presidency to solve that second problem. Sara left Hugpong and jumped into Lakas not for the latter’s democratic principles but to enjoy its mass base. Without being moored to the principles of Lakas, nothing could prevent her from forsaking it.

Finally, among the top leaders of Lakas is the speaker of the House of Representatives. The vice president knows that the speaker is also eyeing the presidency in 2028. While both of them aim for the same post, only one will get the support of the party. Vice President Sara believes it will be the speaker. It is thus best for her to exit from the party this early.