The Philippine Online Chronicles

It is strange to see Senator Manny Villar and Senator Loren Legarda running in the same party, but weirder still (and downright inappropriate) to find the likes of Satur Ocampo, Lisa Masa and Bongbong Marcos sharing the same stage as political running-mates. Politics, it seems, makes strange bedfellows.

Let me make it clear—I’m only referring to political parties like Lakas, Nationalist People Coalition (NPC) and the like, not those belonging to the party-list system. Isn’t a political party is supposed to be the coming together of likeminded individuals representing a political stand or a platform of governance. Ideologies are essentially what separate one party from another. Hence you have the Republican or conservatives and the Democrats or liberals in the US, or the leftists, moderates and rightists in multi-party states.

But is there such a dichotomy among political parties in the Philippines?

Count me among the many political observers in our country and elsewhere who have come to the conclusion that political parties in the Philippines do not epitomize what political parties ought to be. The political stand on key issues of one party from another is supposed to be at the heart of their distinctions. In our country, one party is really no different from the other. First, one can hardly see any distinctions among the platforms or political ideologies of the present (and for that matter, even past) political parties here, unlike say, the Democrats and the Republicans of the US. This was clearly seen in the recently concluded HARAPAN aired live on ANC and The Filipino Channel (TFC). The 7 presidentiables present in the forum (Aquino, delos Reyes, Estrada, Gordon, Perlas, Teodoro, and Villanueva) had an almost generic response to the questions “Are you supporting the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill?”, “What will you do in your first 100 days in office?”, “What three things would you have immediately done on the Maguindanao Massacre?”, etc. They could not argue nor rebut each other’s response—the only difference was the fashion that they responded.

Admittedly, these distinctions are best seen in a system where there are only two dominant parties, as opposed to a multi-party system such as ours. But even in a multi-party set-up, there is the so-called hard left and hard right, and those in between or the moderates.  A perusal of the political platforms of Philippine political parties—if you could find them—hardly helps in making such political classifications. We have no genuine hardliners, just an administration party, which is Lakas versus the opposition parties, ie. the remaining parties. Opposition parties opposing what then? The administration, for sure, but hardly ever because of an underlying political principle adhered to.  It is for these reason I didn’t put party-list parties in the same boat as political parties. At least, from what I gather, (and I could be wrong) the parties under the party-list represent a clear constituency to whom they are held accountable and they have a clear stand on a number of key issues.

Philippine political parties are more of a conglomeration of candidates surrounding some powerful (think rich and politically well-connected) or charismatic (think Noynoy carrying the entire Liberal Party ticket now) personality. Either that, or a break-away faction of disgruntled party-members who failed to get the party-nod to be its standard-bearer, or unholy alliances of parties. The Philippines is the only country I know of where switching political parties is a common occurrence, where there is such a thing as being a member of one party and being a “guest candidate” in some other party. Personality politics is the name of the game.

To answer that question on dichotomy, I’d say there is no dichotomy among political parties.  You don’t hear people ask each other what their party is—it’s a question only for politicians, not the common man. The current crop of political parties in our country is a different kind of political animal altogether, not bound together by principle but by convenience.

Come to think of it, there are no strange bedfellows when you’re talking of Philippine politics.