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IN Butch Pichay’s reckoning of things, a deluge of
votes from Mindanao and areas under the administration’s tight
control would eviscerate the votes for the GO from the cities. This
was an orthodox view—battering the cities from the
countryside—but an entirely credible one.
The administration, after all,
dominated the local and congressional races. About 80 percent of the
battles were between or among contending candidates from the six
parties of the proadministration coalition. So dominant were the
proadministration candidates in the local races that not a single
candidate for governor in the seven provinces of vote-rich Central
Luzon was affiliated with the opposition.
The senatorial candidates of the
opposition GO, so the reckoning went, would have to ram through a
granite wall of resistance before they could even do the simple task
of moving their sample ballots into the precincts.
All of these assumptions had been
proven to be theoretical hogwash and Butch Pichay had conceded,
leaving one TU senatorial hopeful, Miguel Zubiri, in contention for
the 12th senatorial slot. Eligible to run either for Congress or the
senate in 2010 yet, Pichay will have lots of time studying the flaws
of what was supposed to be an orthodox but credible “command votes
equals victory” thesis. And the things he would find out on his
voyage of political discovery may be heart breaking.
The meltdown of the Team Unity,
if one had to write the reasons behind the political debacle, has to
start with two things:
1. The fight-to-the-death between
candidates of the Lakas and the Kampi in the local and congressional
races
2. The nonexistent command votes,
around which the supposed victory of the TU candidates in the May 14
senatorial campaign was anchored.
In a politically perfect world,
not too different from the one written by the TU strategists, the
Lakas and the Kampi would battle it out, fiercely if necessary, but
would place the TU candidates above the fray. Support for the TU
candidates would be total and across the board. The local
competitors can tear each other apart but cannot drag down the TU
candidates into their rivalries.
The competitors indeed competed
fiercely. Killing and maiming rivals were routine. So was dragging
the TU candidates into their vicious rivalries. And so was striking
deals and compromises with the candidates of the GO to win to score
against supposed allies in the proadministration coalition.
The commitment to campaign and
work hard for the TU candidates was the first casualty of the bitter
Lakas-Kampi rivalry.
The “command votes “ were
nowhere. The vote delivery system broke down. The towns in the
so-called Club 56, which voted 12-0 for the administration
candidates in the 2004 senatorial election, failed to deliver. The
267 city and town mayors who ran unopposed also failed to
campaign—heartily and intensely as promised—for the TU
candidates.
Pampanga, Eastern Samar, Bohol,
Negros Oriental and some Mindanao areas delivered majority wins for
the TU but supposed bailiwicks such as Negros Occidental and
Pangasinan went for majority GO.
There were individual failures
that were beyond normal political comprehension. These were the
defeat of Ralph Recto and Tito Sotto. Sotto topped the senatorial
elections in 1992, a battle of 24 winners. The supposition was he
was beyond party affiliation, organization, resources etc. He
belonged to Eat Bulaga, the longest running daytime show on
national television, a show that is regarded an entertainment icon.
Recto was never out of the top
seven in the surveys. He was a preelection favorite. His wife,
Gov.-elect Vilma Santos, can call on voters across the nation to
support her husband. He worked hard in the Senate.
The failure of systems and the
failure of personalities. This was the lethal combination behind the
May 14 meltdown.
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