FOR SHEER size and resources, no party comes even close to the administration’s Lakas-Kampi-CMD. As President Macapagal-Arroyo told party leaders during its convention Thursday, three out of every four elected officials belong to the party. Add to that the vast resources it can tap as the party in control not only of Malacañang but also of the majority of provinces, cities and towns. And in Gilbert Teodoro, it has a presidential candidate who can hold his own against any of his rivals when it comes to intelligence, experience, articulateness and vision. That looks like a powerful combination that would ensure victory in any election. So why does the administration party appear headed for defeat in the May 2010 elections?

The signs are ominous. In the last three surveys conducted by the country’s more reputable pollsters, Teodoro has been languishing in the bottom, way below the other serious contenders: Sen. Benigno Aquino III, Sen. Manuel Villar and former President Joseph Estrada. Could it be that the bright Teodoro miscalculated badly, clambering on board a sinking ship that was already being abandoned by more savvy politicians and plain opportunists?

Problems have been hounding the administration party from the time it started the process of selecting its national candidates. While Bayani Fernando was offering himself as a presidential candidate, party leaders apparently believed he did not have what it took to win the biggest prize. Instead they decided to import Teodoro from the Nationalist People’s Coalition. Finding a running mate for Teodoro proved just as difficult, with one potential candidate after the other turning down the offer, until Eduardo Manzano came along—and he looks like a poor choice, suffering in comparison with his rivals as well as Teodoro himself. Now the party is having a hard time putting together a complete senatorial ticket, and some party leaders are saying they might have only six senatorial candidates bannered by two actors who have very little to show after six years in the Senate. (It seems that party stalwarts have taken to heart the lessons learned from the beating suffered by its senatorial ticket in 2007.)

In the meantime, several bigwigs have ditched the administration party and joined either the Liberal Party or the Nacionalista Party, like Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte and Batangas Gov. Vilma Santos-Recto.

It seems that everyone, including the leaders of the administration party, is aware that a big political machinery and command of vast resources cannot guarantee victory for Lakas-Kampi-CMD. Not when the party is laboring under a very unpopular leader it had mindlessly supported in the face of serious charges of stealing the presidency and graft and corruption. With her abysmal public approval rating, the President has become a deadweight that threatens to sink her own party’s chances of staying in power for six more years.

Thus where once a president’s “anointment” was eagerly sought by politicians, now her own party’s candidates are trying to put as much distance between President Arroyo and themselves. Teodoro would deny this, of course, but Manzano came close to admitting as much when he told Tina Monzon-Palma in an interview on ANC that a vote for their team was not a vote for the administration but “a vote for Gibo.”

Even the President appears to be aware that she has become a liability. At the party convention, she urged her party mates to work for the election of Teodoro and Manzano, but did not raise their hands as tradition dictated. Not only that, she and other party old guards relinquished their positions to a younger generation of leaders, led by Teodoro. She told them to “transform Lakas-Kampi-CMD from the party of the present to become the party of the future.”

Lakas-Kampi-CMD, however, needs to win the present battle for the presidency or it risks becoming a party of the past, not the future. And this early it looks like an uphill battle for the lumbering giant, weighed down by the sins of its leaders. The makeover in leadership may not be enough to convince Filipinos that it is the right party to make the kind of changes they have long wanted to see in our political life.