Game changer
By Conrado de QuirosBut of course Grace Poe topping the senatorial race is the one dramatic, phenomenal, game-changing feature of the last elections.
But of course Grace Poe topping the senatorial race is the one dramatic, phenomenal, game-changing feature of the last elections.
When the newly elected senators assume office on June 30, there will be six women senators—Grace Poe, Loren Legarda, Nancy Binay and Cynthia Villar, plus the two holdovers, Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Pia Cayetano. At least three new opposition senators—Binay, JV Ejercito and Gringo Honasan—will be added to the opposition ranks in the Senate.
In SWS’ view, its survey work has, again, handily passed its self-imposed periodic test of accurately anticipating election results. Our report, “SWS/BW final preelection survey of May 2-3, 2013: 9 Team PNoy, 3 UNA in top 12; 7 Team PNoy, 2 UNA safe,” announced on May 8 (www.sws.org.ph), proved entirely correct, compared to the latest actual results, official or unofficial. It correctly preidentified all winners and losers.
The nine-three result of last Monday’s Senate elections proclaims a no-change outcome. It locks the country into the iron grip of a status quo—continuity of political sterility in the second half of President Aquino’s administration, which has been hamstrung from delivering economic benefits to the Filipino masses by slogans on good governance.
A widespread power failure hit Metro Manila and parts of Luzon Wednesday with the force of a tsunami for up to six hours, paralyzing light rail transport and disrupting office services.
Less than a week to the May 13 elections, the ground for an administration’s sweep of the Senate polls has been deeply eroded by shifts of “block support” from organizations controlling huge chunks of votes, such as the Iglesia ni Cristo and El Shaddai, the latter a religious group associated with the Roman Catholic Church.
United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) senatorial candidate Nancy Binay has been skipping the senatorial fora sponsored by media networks and other election NGOs. This appears to be a deliberate strategy of her campaign to shield her from closer and deeper public scrutiny, inasmuch as she is obviously incapable of articulating policy positions on the various national issues confronting our country. It is also quite obvious that she does not possess the credentials, the intelligence, the training, the discipline and the skills necessary to engage other candidates in a public debate on any of the important public policy issues of the day.
Cracks have appeared on the facade of solidarity of the administration’s Team PNoy senatorial lineup at a critical juncture in the May 13 elections, as tensions between leading candidates of the Liberal Party (LP)-led coalition erupted into mudslinging within its ranks, threatening to break up the alliance.
Is it just me who thinks President Aquino is excessively campaigning for his Team PNoy candidates? I mean I understand that he wants them to win, but he seems to be at almost every Team PNoy rally anywhere in the country, just to root for his candidates. Doesn’t the President have anything more important to do other than be a campaigner? It’s not like he is running for office because he has already been elected president and he can no longer run for reelection in 2016.
The United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) has finally dropped the three “common candidates,” Chiz Escudero, Loren Legarda, and Grace Poe Llamanzares. “We tried our best to accommodate them,” said UNA secretary general Toby Tiangco. “We know that the LP, through Sen. Franklin Drilon, has warned them repeatedly about joining our election activities. We have held on to their assurances that they will join us sooner or later. (But) public statements have been made by at least one of them ruling it out.”
Politics breeds strange bedfellows. In politics, there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies. These two axioms are no more evident than in the composition of the senatorial slate of the administration’s Team PNoy. The coalition is composed of candidates from the Liberal Party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition, and the Nacionalista Party. President Aquino [...]
Apparently fed up with the opportunistic straddling of two horses of three of its senatorial candidates in the May elections, the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) has dropped Senators Francis Escudero and Loren Legarda and political neophyte Grace Poe-Llamanzares from its Senate ticket. The UNA campaign manager, Navotas Rep. Tobias Tiangco, announced that the [...]
