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.
Shortly before Election Day, UNA put to the front of people’s minds what has been at the back of them. The 2013 elections were just a prelude to the 2016 presidential election.
There’s no hard evidence to confirm it. But the growing perception is that at no other time in our nation’s political history have political families become more brazen in promoting their interests than in this year’s elections. One quickly notes this in the senatorial slates of the two dominant coalitions. The opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) slate is led by the children of the three key figures who formed the coalition, namely the son of former President Joseph Estrada, the daughter of Vice President Jejomar Binay, and the son of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile. The administration’s Team PNoy is not any different. Two-thirds of its 12 candidates belong to political families.
The latest Pulse Asia Survey, conducted on March 16-20, showed the political-dynasty issue taking a toll on senatorial candidates closely identified with politically influential families. Overall, the survey found that from a total of 33 candidates for the Senate, at least 15—nine from the administration’s Team PNoy and six from the opposition United Nationalist Alliance [...]
The latest Social Weather Stations survey hints at an electoral landscape in a wild flux. Just last January, United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) candidate Jack Enrile, son of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, was riding high in the poll with a 46-percent rating, ranking 8-9 in the senatorial derby. Now he’s down to rank 13, with a 38-percent survey rating.
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.”
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 [...]
The prospects of the Liberal Party’s senatorial ticket to make a 12-0 sweep in the May 13 midterm elections further dimmed yesterday after its three front-running candidates were warned to show up at the opposition United Nationalist Alliance campaign rallies, or be expelled from the UNA ticket.
The campaign for the midterm elections on May 13 under the Aquino administration opened Tuesday with the proclamation of candidates for 12 positions in the Senate by two major contending coalitions—the administration’s Liberal Party ticket and the lineup of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).
The fates of two people reveal a great deal about the nature of Philippine elections in particular and politics in general.
Three years after an energized electorate voted overwhelmingly for change, we are heading toward a different kind of vote: A pre-2010 kind of election, with candidacies and issues that scream, “Business as usual.”
It gets weirder by the minute. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, north is north and south is south, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
