The leadership qualities of Vice President Jejomar Binay, former President Joseph Estrada, and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile will be tested by how they handle the Koko Pimentel-Migs Zubiri tiff. Koko is firmly against the inclusion of Migs in the UNA senatorial ticket; he accuses the latter of cheating him in the 2007 senatorial elections. Migs served four years of the six-year term that should have gone to Koko, who filed an election protest. Migs resigned before the case was decided, leaving Koko only two years of the term. Koko says Migs “robbed” him of four years of his senatorial term.
UNA, short for United Nationalist Alliance, is a coalition of PDP-Laban and Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP). Binay is the chair of PDP-Laban, Koko is its president; PMP was founded and headed by Erap.
UNA recently announced the names of its senatorial candidates in the 2013 elections. Among them was Migs Zubiri. This did not sit well with Koko, who is still hurting from his “loss” to Migs. Koko is blocking Migs’ entry into the UNA ticket.
Migs joined Erap’s PMP and was nominated by it as one of its senatorial bets, thus automatically making him, Migs, a candidate of UNA. Binay and Erap have an agreement that whoever is a nominee of their respective parties would automatically become an UNA candidate. Thus, as of now, Migs is a candidate of UNA despite the opposition of its president, Koko. Koko is also a senatorial candidate of UNA; thus, the two of them will have to campaign together.
How can he, Koko argues, campaign on the same platform with Migs who had “cheated” him in the 2007 polls? Migs claims that he was not a party to the cheating, that it was done on orders of the GMA administration without his knowledge.
Nothing personal against Migs, says Koko, it is a matter of principle. UNA will be campaigning, he says, on a platform of good governance and honest elections (Koko chairs the Senate committee on electoral reforms). He asks: How can UNA now have a candidate in its ticket who is a “cheat”? How can he campaign for honest elections when he is campaigning with a “cheat”? It would be a contradiction, he emphasizes.
Koko’s camp is threatening that he may join the Liberal Party, and indeed, the LP is courting him, for Koko would make a good addition to any party. But Koko himself says that he would never leave PDP-Laban, one of whose founders is his father, former Sen. Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Sr. If UNA chooses Migs over him, Koko says, he would run as an independent and let other parties “adopt” him, but he would never, never join another party. The old man is in a fighting mood over the “raw deal” his son is getting from UNA.
So the ball is now in the court of the UNA triumvirate, Binay, Erap and JPE. How will they solve the problem? Who will they choose, Migs or Koko? Or will they be able to hammer out a compromise where both Koko and Migs would be happy? For a time, I thought that having two teams campaigning separately, one with Koko and the other with Migs, would be a compromise, but it seems Koko is against even that.
The man on the spot is Binay, UNA’s presidential bet. Will he forsake Koko, his party mate—in fact, the president of his own party—and choose Migs, an orphan who has no party at all? Of course, Erap will choose his candidate, Migs. The deciding vote will be JPE’s. It will be him who will decide the fate of the two rivals.
Politics is addition, according to that wizened politician, Eulogio “Amang” Rodriguez. Indeed, either Koko or Migs would be a good addition to UNA’s ticket—or to any other ticket. But it looks like if you choose one you would have to discard the other. So in this particular case, politics is not only addition but also subtraction.
It would be interesting if Koko and Migs run for the Senate at the same time, either in the same ticket or in different ones. It would be like a return match, a grudge fight, like a second Pacquiao-Bradley bout. Who would get more votes, Koko or Migs? Who would get more votes in Mindanao? (Both of them come from Mindanao.) In a sense, it would be an indication of who really won in the 2007 senatorial race.
A word on the announced senatorial bets of UNA. It looks like the same old gang running again even if they are already banned by the Constitution from doing so. The Constitution bans political dynasties, but dynasties in the Philippines are increasing instead of decreasing because no legislator has filed a bill to ban such. Who would, when three-fourths of the members of Congress belong to political dynasties? A bill against dynasties would immediately be laughed out of this Congress.
Who are UNA’s senatorial bets? They comprise the younger generation of political dynasties. Rep. JV Ejercito is the son of Erap; Rep. Jackie Enrile is the son and namesake of JPE; Joey de Venecia is the son of former Speaker Joe de Venecia; Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia is the daughter of Cebu’s grand old man, Rep. Pablo Garcia; Rep. Mitos Magsaysay is of course a member of the Magsaysay clan of Zambales started by the late President Ramon Magsaysay; and Koko himself is the son of former Sen. Nene Pimentel.
In earlier Senates, Erap had a son (Jinggoy Estrada) and wife (Loi Estrada) as senators at the same time. Today, Alan Peter Cayetano and his sister, Pia Cayetano, children of the late Sen. Rene Cayetano, are serving as senators at the same time.
The LP will have as senatorial candidates Rep. Sonny Angara, son of Sen. Edgardo Angara, and Rep. Erin Tañada from the clan of the late Sen. Lorenzo Tañada.
Aren’t there any other names?