No surprise

The Marcos-Duterte tandem did not come as a surprise to people close to the camps of Bongbong Marcos and Inday Sara Duterte.

The attendance of both Bongbong Marcos and Sara Duterte at the birthday party of the wife of House Minority Leader Martin Romualdez in Cebu City recently was not a chance meeting; it was planned so they could have secret talks about a possible partnership.

After all, Bongbong Marcos and Martin Romualdez are first cousins.

The dream ticket of the former senator and Davao City mayor was already in the works months before that “chance” meeting in Cebu.

My little birdies said that Bongbong’s sister, Sen. Imee Marcos, a close friend of Sara’s, facilitated that meeting.

Imee and Sara had been talking about the possible tandem between the presidential candidate from Luzon and the vice presidential aspirant from Mindanao.

The photo ops in Cebu City and at the wedding of the son of Sen. Bong Revilla, where both Bongbong and Sara stood as sponsors, were dead giveaways of a brewing partnership.

The Marcos-Duterte team-up is formidable.

Both have impressive pedigrees and are knowledgeable in the inner workings of government because of their fathers – former president Ferdinand Marcos and current President Rodrigo Duterte.

Filipinos tend to favor the children of prominent politicians. The following are examples: Benigno “Noynoy’ Aquino III, son of President Corazon Aquino; Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, daughter of President Diosdado Macapagal; President Joseph Estrada’s offspring, J.V. Ejercito and Jinggoy, who were both senators; Sen. Pia Cayetano and Taguig Congressman Alan Peter Cayetano, children of the late former Senate president Rene Cayetano.

Until she filed her candidacy for Davao City mayor, Sara was leading other “presidentiables” in pre-election surveys. Always close behind her was Bongbong.

If their lead – Marcos as presidential candidate and Duterte-Carpio as vice presidential aspirant – over their rivals are maintained until Election Day, their victory is a foregone conclusion.

Their fathers’ popularity has rubbed off on both Bongbong and Sara.

Even towards the end of his term in June 2022, Rodrigo Duterte enjoys a high popularity rating, a phenomenon considering that his predecessors’ ratings declined considerably as their terms were ending.

Bongbong and Sara’s respective command votes, if combined, would make them win.

Sara has her father’s DDS (Duterte Diehard Supporters) and the Visayas and Mindanao voters because she speaks Sugbuhanon (Cebuano Visayan), which is the predominant dialect in the two regions.

Bongbong, on the other hand, has the “Solid North,” composed of the Ilocano-speaking provinces in Luzon, his late father’s turf, and the Waray-Waray vote of Leyte and Samar, where his mother Imelda hails from.

The elderly and the “baby-boomers” (those born between 1946 and 1964), who were young during the Marcos martial law years, would go for Bongbong for sentimental reasons.

The EDSA crowd that toppled Marcos from power in February 1986 was not representative of the entire country. Many of the older generations that experienced martial law can’t forget the numerous achievements of Bongbong’s old man.

The many highways and bridges built, the structures that sprouted and have now become icons are hallmarks of the Philippine landscape: Cultural Center of the Philippines, Film Center, Philippine International Convention Center, Lung Center, Kidney Center, Heart Center, among many others.

The martial law period taught Filipinos discipline, such as lining up for rides, waiting for their turn to be served in government offices and cleaning up their home surroundings.

Except for the suppression of press freedom, people enjoyed other freedoms during the martial law period, such as the freedom to travel and live undisturbed in their homes.

People who complained of abuses during that period were either sympathizers of the rebels or armed partisans.

As one foreign correspondent with whom I had a drinking session during that period said, “The state has the right to protect itself from extinction.”

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Sara’s close rival for the vice presidency is going to be Senate President Tito Sotto.

A Duterte-Sotto race will be a photo finish.

Sotto is hugely popular with the masa because of Eat Bulaga, a decades-long primetime entertainment show on TV, and his long stint as senator.

As we all know, the hoi polloi elect leaders based on popularity and not issues. If we take that as a gauge, then Sotto is a runaway winner.
Like Marcos and Duterte-Carpio, Sotto also has an impressive political lineage.

Tito is the grandson and namesake of Sen. Vicente Sotto, a very controversial and active legislator in the post-Liberation era.

If I may say, Old Man Sotto sponsored a law that protects journalists from revealing their sources of information to authorities during an investigation.

Tito Sotto has charming ways of winning his colleagues in the Senate to his side. He would not have been elected by his peers as Senate President if he didn’t have that charisma.

Probably because he was once a TV comedian – he starred in Iskul Bukol, a comedy drama about dunce students in a classroom – intellectual snobs look down on him.

Tito is, in fact, a very intelligent man. He was my classmate in Grade VII at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran.

He graduated the youngest among his classmates – including this columnist – because he was accelerated twice in grade school in that high-standard institution (at the time).

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Speaker Lord Allan Velasco celebrated his birthday at the posh (and needless to say, very expensive) Balesin resort.
This public servant is either insensitive or a show-off.

Velasco held a birthday bash in the exclusive resort without regard for the misery of his constituents in Marinduque, an island province.

Velasco, whose father is governor and mother a town mayor, should not have made public his birthday bash at a time when thousands of Filipinos have died or are dying of COVID-19 and millions don’t have food on their table.