Election 2025: surnames, surprises, and Sara's triumph

During the recently held 2025 mid-term election campaign period, I noticed based on the campaign posters and other materials that many candidates are quite young or young-ish. It was no longer like the days of our parents and grandparents, or even just a few years ago, when campaign materials showed somber and unsmiling candidates running for office. Now, most seem like profile photos in social media profile pages.

But, oh yeah, many of the old family names still appear in these campaign posters. Because the thing is, political families (or dynasties, if you will) will never be stamped out in local politics, at least for now. So you will always have the Duranos, Marcoses, Singsons, Dys, Garcias, and many more all over the Philippines. That is something that is not just unique to us, but for most of the Asian world. So complaining and obsessing on the political dynasties of the Philippines will do us no good.

And in my opinion, not all political families are bad. For years, the Osmeñas have governed Cebu City (and at one point the province) and have brought relative prosperity among the people. And the Dutertes of Davao City have managed to instill discipline, peace and order, and prosperity in their bailiwick. But they also lost several times, but managed to regain power in later elections. In Davao City, the methods of FPRRD may not have been by the book, but he always did everything for the people of the city. And for the past two to three decades, people have always shown unwavering support to the Duterte family.

His daughter, Vice President Sara Z. Duterte, finally decided to actively campaign for not just her allies but also for her father whom rumors always claimed she wasn't very fond of. While not all the Duter10 slate made it, they garnered enough votes to guarantee at least five Duterte-supported candidates into the magic 12: Bong Go, Bato de la Rosa, Rodante Marcoleta, Camille Villar, and Imee Marcos, all already officially proclaimed as senators-elect. And Bong Go topped the list of winners, garnering 27.1 million votes, the most number a winning senator received in Philippine history.

Bato dela Rosa placed third, which again is clearly a good indication that Sara's participation in the campaign and her endorsement of the Duter10s helped tipped the scale to these winning candidates. We have further seen how the perceived persecution of the VP by members of the House has led to their downfall, with the likes of Benny Abante, Stella Quimbo, and Dan Fernandez losing spectacularly in their electoral races.

In Cebu Province, another woman has received the nod of the Cebuano voters with more than a million votes: Pam Baricuatro. She is unseating a governor who has been at the helm of power since 2004, and despite the odds and the survey results that seemed to have favored Gwen Garcia, Pam Baricuatro successfully won the governorship.

And of course, in Davao, despite the machinery of the administration supporting the candidacies of the Nograleses and their allies in trying to unseat the Dutertes, all five of the Duterte candidates won by a landslide, especially Tatay Digong's 662,630 against Karlo Nograles' 80,852, a mere 11% of the voting population.

Many attribute Go's victory and record-breaking votes to his unwavering loyalty to Tatay Digong, but some analysts have indicated that it was Sara's jumping into the campaign that added more to people's support. VP Sara's endorsement has been seen as a litmus test of her presidential viability for 2028, and for now it does seem that she just might have enough support in 2028.

Nothing lasts forever. The younger generation will take over the old, while new family names will replace entrenched ones. I pray this last election will be the start of something new.