Mocha for senator?
House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez made an interesting announcement during PDP-Laban’s mass oath activity here in Cebu last Friday. He floated the names of Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque and Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Assistant Secretary Margaux “Mocha” Uson as possible administration bets for senator in the 2019 midterm elections.
Actually, nothing is etched in stone as of the moment. Now until late next year names for various positions open in the next elections would be floated but that does not mean they would be official candidates. A number of bets would be vying for 12 senatorial posts in 2019 but I am sure tens of politicians are hoping they would be in the running to run under the administration slate.
The administration senatorial slate is the most attractive for a number of reasons, including it having the financial clout being in control of the government and because of President Rodrigo Duterte’s relatively high ratings in surveys. The jockeying to be in the slate would continue until the filing of the certificates of candidacy.
I am not surprised about Alvarez mentioning Roque. Roque planned to run for senator in 2016 under then vice president Jejomar Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) but decided instead on the easier route to Congress via the party-list system. What is surprising is the inclusion of Uson, whose main claim to fame is as a pro-Duterte entertainer and blogger. But senatorial slates in recent elections always include entertainers to attract voters.
The filing of the certificates of candidacy is still more than a year away,though—a long time for both the Duterte administration and for people occupying high positions in it. Consider one of the current administration’s advantages: the president’s popularity. We know that it can be fleeting and too dependent on many factors the administration do not have control of. History tells us that incumbents’ popularity ratings always go down.
For President Duterte, his approval rating has in fact gone down in recent surveys, the reason why he has come up with at least two important moves, replace previous presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella with the more talkative Roque and give the sole task of battling the illegal drugs trade from the Philippine National Police (PNP) to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).
Meanwhile, Roque and Uson are magnets for controversy. For Roque, there is also the tricky part of balancing his actions and statements between pro-Duterte fanatics (especially bloggers) and his own principles that make him less fanatical to his boss. But Roque is less drawn to controversies than Uson, who is into more controversies in the past. Will they both survive until the filing of the certificates of candidacy?
A good case study is the result of the recent elections in the US wherein those opposed to President Donald Trump came out in droves to defeat many of his party’s candidates. Note that Duterte did not get the majority of voters even though he won. The total number of voters who voted separately for the other bets is bigger than those who voted for Duterte. What if they converge to opposition bets?