Dwindling

Something really strange went on at the Amoranto Stadium yesterday. A “national assembly” of the ruling PDP-Laban was held, apparently initiated by some low-ranking party members. The avowed purpose of the assembly was to replace the top leaders of the party. A certain Rogelio Garcia from Region 12 was nominated to replace party president Koko Pimentel while a certain Willy Talag of the PDP-Laban NCR sought to replace former House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez as secretary-general.

The sitting party leaders had to issue a public statement declaring the assembly “unauthorized.” In a subsequent text message to journalists, Koko Pimentel described the persons behind the event “usurpers of party authority.” The assembly went on nevertheless.

What happened at the Amoranto Stadium might be passing folly after all. But it speaks much of the trials now facing what is, after all, the “ruling party.”

Never before had a dominant political party needed to deal with the farce of a rump session of minor members seeming to creep out of the woodwork. We heard about fake news. Now we actually have a fake political party where pretenders to the party leadership conduct “mass oath-taking” of new members. Consider the context. Koko Pimentel was deposed as Senate President a couple of months ago. It was a quiet, vastly more polite realignment in the Senate. But the result is the same: the lone PDP-Laban senator, facing the challenge of a tough reelection campaign, was ejected from his seat of prominence and removed from the line of succession.

Early this week, PDP-Laban secretary general Pantaleon Alvarez was ousted as Speaker of the House in a raucous session carried on live television. Thoroughly rejected by his own peers, it is unlikely he will win his bid to be minority leader. He has now been reduced to a backbencher in the House.

The two party leaders have seen their political fortunes dive. The prospects for them winning back the powers they once wielded do not seem promising.

The vastly diminished political stature of both Pimentel and Alvarez does not bode well for a “ruling party” trying to overwhelm the midterm elections. Party members preparing to do battle for hundreds of local posts at stake next May are not exactly encouraged by the recent devaluation of the party’s most visible leaders.

Faced with an open act of defiance, Pimentel did little to reassert party authority. Being the lawyer that he is, Pimentel threatened to file cases against those involved in the rump session. But this is a political, not a legal, question.

It is easy to imagine there is disillusionment in the ranks.

After Alvarez was deposed, Rep. Rolando Andaya raised the possibility of PDP-Laban members migrating to other party formations. This is pregnant with political implications even as party leaders tried to minimize the prospect.

Many read Andaya’s statement as ominous. A significant number of PDP-Laban members are attempting to join ranks with the Sara Duterte-led Hugpong ng Pagbabago, a “regional” party formation recently accredited by the Comelec.

Whether she realizes it or not, Sara’s political star is rising – especially in the wake of that decisive rebellion at the House of Representatives. Even as she disavowed any plans to seek national office, Sara ranks high in the voter preference surveys for senators.

Incidentally, women politicians topped the senatorial preference surveys. There are early indications women politicians will be a force to reckon with in the coming elections.

Normally, the party to which the sitting president is affiliated with looks forward to the midterm elections to consolidate its hold and be better positioned to hold its dominance beyond the incumbent’s term. The PDP Laban does not seem up to the task.

To begin with, the PDP-Laban was not a party of significance until Rodrigo Duterte won the presidency by a landslide under the party’s colors. The party’s ranks ballooned with defections after the 2016 elections. Two party stalwarts took the leadership posts of both the House and the Senate.

However, it appears the party did little to consolidate itself into a potent electoral machine over the last few years. No one, it seems, was put charge of party building.

While the President enjoys popularity, he has neither the interest nor the aptitude to do the task. He has no inclination to perpetuate himself or his political bloc in power. He does not lose sleep fretting over his own legacy. He is great at charming his audiences but stops short of recruiting them to become party cadres.

Pimentel, the nominal party leader, has been described alternately as lackadaisical or complacent. He is definitely not an organization man. Nor is he a coalition-builder in the caliber, say, of Jose de Venecia. The backslapping builder of “rainbow” coalitions perfectly complemented the rather top-down military style of President Fidel Ramos.

Alvarez, for his part, has the uncanny ability to antagonize every person he meets. He is definitely not the party’s smiling face. Nor has anyone ever accused him of being the ruling party’s ideologue or the keeper of its vision.

With the PDP-Laban’s laid-back president and taciturn secretary-general, the party is less the political behemoth it could possibly be. The term “ruling party” seems entirely undeserved.

After all that happened, it should not be surprising the PDP-Laban’s membership starts dwindling. The elections that loom in the horizon will generate strong pressures testing the party’s organizational capacity. Pocket rebellions, such as the one we saw at the Amoranto Stadium yesterday, will recur.

All in all, this seems a political party formation in imminent danger of irrelevance.