That was a saying popularized—or made notorious—by Jun Lozada, expressing an exasperation with officials since the days of the economic crisis in the 1980s. It was the gist of the behind-the-scenes tensions between then President Benigno S. Aquino III and the Iglesia ni Cristo, who’d assigned an elder as a kind of liaison between the church and the executive branch. Aquino was what I’d describe as a pragmatic idealist, in that he adhered to democratic values and aspired to ethical governance, but also felt it was incumbent on the heads of coalitions to give the different subsets of the coalition their due. Tensions would arise when Aquino felt the requests of any individual coalition partner became excessive, particularly if an appointment was requested for a manifestly unfit or notorious individual. He would, at first, make a gentle request for reconsideration, and failing an improvement, a more forceful reminder that the public interest was being imperiled; and failing that, he would refuse.

All things being equal, requests for appointments here or there, so long as not expressed as a kind of quota, might be considered. But one thing he was insistent on was that reserving entire subsections of the bureaucracy or its functions for the exclusive use—or misuse—of a specific group, had to stop. It didn’t matter if previous administrations had ceded say, the manufacture of driver’s licenses, or vehicle license plates, to a group, or that a group should always have a say in the appointment of at least one member of the Supreme Court: these would stop, and a more rational system put in place. The problem with this was that what is euphemistically called our “litigious culture” could–and did—bog down any efforts at reform in a swarm of court cases, delaying if not derailing efforts at reform—enraging the public, which wanted its services now, and which viewed reform and future benefits to the public purse as inconvenient abstractions.

One might infer the Iglesia ni Cristo reached a point where it failed to see how it could continue to have smooth relations with the Aquino administration, but it enjoyed better relations with its successor. Its relationship with the second Marcos administration has been polite, if not cordial, officially speaking but during the supposed showdown between Victor Rodriguez and the First Lady, quite a few observers claimed to detect a tacit, if not explicit, support for Rodriguez and criticism of the First Lady: perhaps those observers confused the pointed statements of prominent media personalities, who belong to the Iglesia ni Cristo, as being sanctioned by their Church.

That level of protective ambiguity can be said to continue shielding the Iglesia from accusations of being hostile to the administration. Its recent national mobilization was framed as being in support of the President’s own appeal for maintaining national unity, meaning, of course, the continued partnership of the President and the Vice President. More to the point, the timing of the exercise, so soon after the “Traslacion” of the Black Nazarene, serves to counter Catholic fervor with Iglesia numbers, with the crucial difference that the Catholic leadership is practically politically neutered while that of the Iglesia has shown it has a willing and able flock when it comes to the coming midterms. This will count, of course, in local races like San Juan and Quezon cities, but most of all, nationally, in the race where the results count the most: the Senate.

Just as a blunt exercise in bloc voting, where would the 1.8 million, which the police estimated participated in the Iglesia rally, matter most? The last few slots of the 12-person Senate race, where if the December snapshot of Social Weather Stations is any guide, the fate of the following could be affected: Binay, Abby (NPC) in 10th place (25 percent), and Lapid, Lito (NPC) in 11th place (23 percent) while for the 12th place are: Villar, Camille (NP), Dela Rosa, Bato (PDPLBN), and Marcos, Imee R. (NP) all of whom are tied in 12th to 14th place with 21 percent each, and Pangilinan, Kiko (LP) in 15th place (20 percent). The strong contenders for slots one to nine only include about two clearly pro-Duterte candidates; in 12th to 15th place are at least two pro-Duterte senators: the future of that bloc is at stake. Without them, things might look very different.