The Long View
Brains without bodies (1)
LAST WEEK I suggested that when confronted with people who want to be president, we should ask, Who has endorsed their candidacy? Candidates presenting themselves for the presidency are like brains, asking to be elected to steer the ship of state, but who don’t have bodies: how then, can they be expected to grasp the tiller? By telepathy?
As brains, they may be brimming over with ideas; they may have access to vast sums of cash; but for a country that expects presidents to solve problems, and with the least pain for the electorate, the whole current setup is a recipe for frustration and disillusionment.
In the case of senators, they are well and truly merely brains, bulging with good ideas and who can float around as parties of one, independent, even isolated – and receive public support for it. But a senator who dared to be a maverick isn’t necessarily the person best suited to be a chief executive who has to get both bureaucrats and politicians to work together.
In the case of non-senators, it’s even more problematic, because while a senator can point to a national mandate, others can’t: at best they can claim a provincial or city mandate; at worst, they can claim to have been given the confidence of a president (and the present dispensation has abandoned all pretenses to competence being a qualification for an appointment, since only loyalty seems to count).
The more established politicians will therefore validate their candidacies by having themselves proclaimed official candidates of whatever political party they happen to belong to by the time the official campaign period starts.
Of the two oldest parties, the Nacionalistas and the Liberals, the problem of their putative candidates, Senators Manny Villar and Mar Roxas, is that their claim to being the standard bearers of their respective parties lies more in inheritance than because of actual competition. Much-diminished because of the abolition of rules that fostered parties as electoral vehicles (such as bloc voting, which had given aspiring senatorial candidates an incentive for campaigning along party lines; without it, the Senate became a money and popularity contest fought ought by individual candidates), and martial law, they still have a kind of residual usefulness in some areas.
Remnants of the old party bailiwicks remain: consider Cavite for the NP, parts of Quezon Province and the Visayas for the LP. There still remain vestiges of the old network of these parties, and whoever claims the mantle of party leadership can say he leads an established national network of some sort.
However, both parties remain cleaved by schism: the NP has never managed to reunite with the NPC, and the Liberals remain split over the decision of some of its stalwarts to defend or reject the President.
There are other parties of equally recent vintage, but they tend to be overshadowed by the preeminence of one family, or one or two political figures, who call all the shots: PMP and Estrada; PDP-Laban with Binay and Pimentel; LDP and Angara; KBL and the Marcoses; and perhaps the most formidable of the new post-Edsa parties, the NPC.
After he failed to assume control of the Nacionalistas, Danding Cojuangco split off and founded the Nationalist People’s Coalition, today far more effective, politically, than the NP; not least because it contains much of the remnants of the old KBL, which in its own time had been meant to be like the Japanese Occupation’s Kalibapi, a movement to absorb the old parties. The KBL practically dissolved after 1986 but had its leaders re-coalesced they could have recaptured the presidency in 1992, if Cojuangco and Imelda Marcos hadn’t split the Loyalist vote; still, the ghost of the KBL animated the Estrada campaign in 1998.
In fact, Cojuangco’s and Marcos’ defeat in 1992 – their victory would have been a colossal repudiation of EDSA only six years after it happened – and Ramos’ victory in that year, followed by Estrada’s victory in 1998, a repudiation of the People Power generation of leaders, all point to the way our post-EDSA political system has been more a case of politics as subtraction, and not politics as addition, which is how the late Amang Rodriguez understood it, and how most people today think of it.
Earlier than most, the military tactician in Ramos understood that the new multiparty version of our democracy actually made the creation of large national movements, and the mobilization of large national constituencies, a waste of time and resources. In a multi-candidate race where no majority is required, and where no run-off race takes place, success for a presidential candidate
is not to get an overall majority, it’s merely to get slightly more than the next strongest candidate.
Ramos got a smaller percentage of the votes than almost all of the defeated presidential contenders from 1946 to 1969. Even Estrada’s percentage in 1998 was smaller than that of the only non-majority president prior to martial law: Carlos P. Garcia. And Estrada himself, elected to office in the manner of Macapagal in 1961 (he became a Liberal president with a Nacionalista-dominated House), was saddled with a Ramos-era coalition that ended up impeaching him. Macapagal’s daughter at least learned from her father and secured House support and has nurtured it since.
The most successful party of the post-EDSA years, the Lakas-CMD (itself a splinter party from the old Cory-era LDP monolith), is in the curious position of being a large, nationally entrenched party with a gigantic body but no manhood. It’s only been able to resist Kampi being artificially grafted on as its substitute gonads but that isn’t saying much. The party was methodically emasculated, by the President herself, who first sidelined Ramos, then Jose de Venecia Jr.: clip, clip. And 2010 presents it with the dilemma of a body about to lose its brain. (To be continued)
because in 2007, the Lakas-Kampi already lost its arms in the Senatorial race.
Or, bodies without brains. LOL, what a state of affairs.
Not so. There are bodies alright! They are bodies with brain, all of them, although of different consistencies. Must have been the goodies available in abundance, or the environment, or some other things, that when the body with brain arrived at certain elevation, something happened.
And that is that the brain turned into icecream.
LOL, if Ramos and de Venecia represented the manhood of Lakas, that was one pussywhipped party to start with! 🙂
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Judgefloro&oldid=16482677
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=30&art_id=26375&sid=9641493&con_type=3
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_print.asp?art_id=26375&sid=9641493
“Florentino says he predicted Joseph “Erap” Estrada’s presidential downfall and prayed that present incumbent Gloria Macapagal Arroyo would survive her endless political battles. Looking ahead, he reckons Arroyo’s power will end soon and the nation will suffer as a result.”
EVALUATION:
Many pundits did complicate the 2010 election or No-El scenario. I will make it so simple for you, I will lay down on your table my cards. Of course, like before, [I]Deus Ex Machina[/I], like medical surgery and hospital tours of both PGMA, FG, Abalos, R. Gonzalez, the 5 S.C. mystic fires … may MAKE the elections more interesting aside from Dagdag-bawas IT in e-Voting.
[B]First[/B], how can PGMA, which I predicted since 2004 to fall but will survive the fall until … be legally free from tons of Ombudsman-Sandiganbayan prosecution-persecutions? I will not answer this, since the legal answer is so complicated, but boils down to the Supreme Court Justices’ PENs later on. Yes, she appointed all of them, but will these S.C. Justices put FINIS to PGMA nightmares to be free from prosecution, JAIL and exile, plus her asset’s sequestration by hungry Vendetta-opposition? I will not answer this, since, I will be guilty of speculation and NO BASIS objections.
[B]Second[/B], PGMA has plan B and C with magic/s. In 2001, I sat beside Erap and cursed Sanlakas Cong. JV Bautista at Veterans; I told Erap that he will be judicially vindicated but not in political history.
In 2002, I predicted in writing in more than 20 SC pleadings that PGMA will be ousted IN TIME, the physical hurting will coincide with her irrevesible downfall.
But my requested audience with FPJ was blocked by the Oreta-Soto barriers. So, a week before the elections, I predicted before Justice Regino C. Hermosisima, Jr. that despite all prophecies, PGMA will survive her ordeal, lest my case be not decided. So, my case was, by Justice Minita Viray Chico-Nazario, on April 7, 2006. Thus, in exchange, I had flooded the internet with the prophecy fed to WSJ and Hong Kong’s The Standard per ace journalists Mr. James Hookway and Mr. Sam Chambers, respectively, regarding PGMA’s survival at the very least IN TIME: her respite.
[B]Third[/B], all are afraid of Chiz Escudero.
[B]Fourth[/B], who will beat Chiz? So, Manolo Quezon accurately answered this: Brains, Moneys, but no bodies.
[B]Questions:[/B]
I will skip Villar on this, since, I had already written about him in the prior PinoyExchange topics.
1) Remember that politics is just a repetition of political history. Will an unmarried person be a Philippine President? Mar Roxas had been flooded with noisy or very loud gossips on sexuality (Mother’s child) and this is material in the making of a President. He has all the resources, machinery, money and of course followers. The US Think Tank correctly reported that Mr. Palengke is a reality-oriented politician. He will not dive in the pool if he cannot float in the surveys. How can Roxas erase the cursed destiny of Gerry? Let us leave it at that.
2) If Noli and Gilbert cannot win, can CJ Puno, Among Ed-Padaca-Villanueva-Velarde be used as floaters or rather POLITICS of PROFIT by MaDISKARTE Harvey Keh, to at the very least SUBTRACT votes from Chiz and the other top winna-BEEs?
Well, in floods of emails, of which I was a victim, I had warned Keh not to Spam my email. Bluntly, I replied to Keh’s email, that I cannot predict or help Among-Kaya natin to be President, since I hate politics of Profit or magic.
[I and you had watched how Bro. Eddie outwitted PGMA before 2004. Bro. Eddie, who studied the art of politics began to hate PGMA, and used his pulpit and TV stations to recruit other Christian denominations including Catholic Bishops to join cursing PGMA. Bro. Eddie knows he had and has no chance in politics, but can PROFIT religiously, financially and PUNDITly but joining or floating in the POOL].
I had watched in ANC how Mr. Ricky Carandang cross-examined or rather rattled Harvey Keh.
Keh, which I call as MaDiscarte is off-reality, but profit oriented. Mr. Carandang at point blank shot Key with a fatal question: why did Kaya Natin fail to reach Classes C and D. Evading Carandang, Keh pondered and replied off-tanget.
Unmindful of the Omnibus Elections Penal provisions of suggesting moneys-pledges before the campaign period, Keh had been flooding the internet with boastings about OFWs and Filipino monetary pledges to support Kaya Natin.
But Villanueva cannot be JOKED. Bro. Eddie smashed Keh’s Kaya Natin, accusing it as having pre-BAKED in favor of Among Ed (mixed with Padaca, Villanueva, Puno, etc. of course, with the money and machinery of Mr. Palengke, if the latter will not float in the SWS swimming pool). Keh’s Discarte tried a xerox copy-cat of the US primaries. But it was cheaply thrown in the can by no-nonsense traPOS.
Who will invest money in Keh’s novo-politics, which has no chance of WinaBEElity. Miracle? It only happens in Rome, which has a final say on who will be Saints per 2 miracles.
If President Panlilio and VP Padaca will take their twin oaths of offices in 2010, will Exec. Sec. and Acting BIR-CUSTOMs Com. Harvey Key accept Classes D, E, and my resume to be appointed by Among Ed, even as clerk of the KehnKoy Curt?
Change the Film: Will Dabu vs Guiao and almost all Pampanga Mayor’s scenario repeat the same game in the Panlilio’s 2010 administration? I do not want to glorify Arch. Oscar V. Cruz’ tirades or rather bitter spitfires, but I am sure, I will never ever get a job if Keh reigns; so,
this Good Friday, I only have one option: I will recite their first names side by side with the most powerful biblical Curse per Psalms 109/73, noon time and 3pm.
[B]IN FINE[/B], we are all excited on Monday the 13th when Congress opens with the Decoy and Real McCoy Resolutions of Nograles and Villafuerte. Remember that the Lambino Initiative lost by just one S.C. vote. Now, with vengeance, the full force of PGMA’s S.C. appointed Justices will face the PGMA Enrile Senate with gusto on CHA-cha amid the threats of CJ Panganiban regarding street power.
With bated breath, Chiz Escudero, who hopes to be an Obama mania, might be loosing steam. This is politics!
[B]Question: Is Judge Floro’s WSJ and The Standard prophecy on PGMA’s survival – stretch down the finish pay off wire in 2010 horse race? To be continued, if you wish to reply.[/B][/QUOTE]
CJ PUNO, M Velarde/E Villanueva: Moral Farce?
Watching ANC, I saw this Title: “Moral Force or Farce”
My 2 Cents: A political and legal evaluation of Chance:
I am not surprised why the political GIANT Iglesia Ni Kristo, even during Marcos Times, had been utterly silent on politics amid its last minute Judgment on The ANOINTED.
Why are the rats so noisy in politics?
Politics is the science of the weird and impossible, of magic and dagdag-bawas from the Kitty and of SIN.
I. Bangon Pilipinas & M Velarde
Please do not underestimate the politically Madiscarte E Villanueva. He had, for years, been selling the Bible; and with GUSTO, he worked hard for PGMA amid the JIL’s having been bestowed top and juicy posts in the her government.
GREEDIER than Madamn Imelda of Newsweek, JIL knew that Bangon can do wonders like hedging, political positioning, and IN THE END, swaying the votes against FPJ, etc.
Now, the 2nd coming of E Villanueva is done with vengeance: Sell the Bible to Bible traders – Iyong mga Kumakalakal ng Gospel.
Since E Villanueva has no damn chance even in the SWS-Pulse tainted or rather traded surveys, he needs alliance from a new force, since 3rd Force did not click or Kodak so to speak in the past elections, except, of course TABAKO, but FVR is not a Farce, just that naMATANDA si Miriam Santiago, malas, eh!
So, E Villanueva crafted the Party List (Dyos at Bayan, QTV 11) by local Bocaue loser Jon Jon Villanueva, to emerge as Congress catalyst. Villanuevas are known losers in Bocaue, Vistado na sila.
Mike Velarde has sold titles, lots, real properties including the Bible, for top posts in the Government and fruity judicial/S.C. Decisions against Lola Eli ADD; his party list emerges as his window to further his Greedy ambitions.
But Velarde knows that he has no chance to be President and that PGMA’s boat, despite Judge Floro’s 2006 prophecy that PGMA will oust her political rats but in the end her term and tenure will painfully end.
II. Harvey Key’s Panlilio
Panlilio is clever than a cat. He did strike Gold in Pampanga, by doing a magic of weird in local disgusted Kapangpangan arena. Even Pampanga’s Best Hizon was enticed to gamble P 5 million tocinos (now subject of OEC offense of not being declared as expense). Priest is something different, and Mekeni desired NEW not Bangon but another kind of putahe, that hopefully will Bless or Bliss her longanisa empire.
But Panlilio’s political enemies did mushroom to mayors’ turf to arena of Barangays. So, Panlilio might have zero chance in being re-elected. Panlilio treats his nemesis Lola Oscar V. Cruz as a rat-prophet, tailing the former even in the Malacanang P 500,ooo gift.
Good News for Keh and Dabu, since, religious groups which are rat-ty unlike the politically SOUND Iglesia ni Kristo, had been grouping.
Panlilio needs a good machinery, and Mar Roxas who never ever had or has a damn chance to be destined President, do and did have the money, guts, and machinery to catapult a Moral Force or Third Force to OUST PGMA the Iron Lady of Asian Politics.
III. CJ Puno
Malacanang had consulted not only dwarves, astrologers, psi, UP political pundits and even Ateneo freaks, saying that Mamang Noli has no damn chance to be President amid his broken marriage and more importantly the CURSE of his children from the RTC QC family case. Judge Floro had been busy helping his Vice Campaign Manager Francisco “Isco” Katibayan III (Vice of Atty. Andres) last 2004, but the dwarves were gypped and Judge Floro is jobless since Mamang Noli failed to be Acting President as Katibayan Lusted.
So, with Teodoro, Fernando and political rats not floating properly despite ads, PGMA has only 2 options not to be prosecuted by the Sandiganbayan and incarcerated in Tanay II, or then exiled to Monaco: a) cha-cha which is racing against constitutional TIME and b) floating candidates it will hopefully reach at like Cheezie who is held by NPC, but NPC’s Danding who is being scared by the Sandiganbayan, had allied with PGMA.
Puno’s term had been painfully cut by a shoe shine boy, Artemio Panganiban. Now, a lame duck CJ Puno must leave a legacy: try luck in politics, with barely legal 13 months to go, going 70, an Old Dog.
But political pundits know that the Methodists, CBCP, Bible Society, and Council of Churches, never ever had any SAY on their flocks, unlike the SOLID Iglesia ni Manalo (Rember that the FPJ disqualification case was decided 8-5 per Manalo’s intervention).
The LINKS:
[B]Puno to launch group for clean, honest 2010 polls[/B]
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/154567/Puno-to-launch-group-for-clean-honest-2010-polls
GMA news.tv – ?Mar 27, 2009?
MANILA, Philippines – Chief Justice Reynato Puno will launch a moral force movement [B]on May 8[/B] to address what he called the problem of moral leadership that …
[B]Other Stories[/B]
http://www.bworldonline.com/BW033009/content.php?id=079
BusinessWorld Online – ?Mar 29, 2009?
Mr. Puno has been at the forefront of a moral force in governance, which critics claimed is his platform for seeking the presidency in 2010.
[B]Senator Mar Roxas & Chief Justice Reynato Puno (right) at the 12th[/B] …
http://www.visayandailystar.com/2009/March/27/
Visayan Daily Star – ?Mar 26, 2009?
Puno, in an interview, said he is spearheading the launching of a Filipino moral force movement on May 8 mainly to address the problem of moral leadership. …
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20090329-196771/If-elected-Panlilio-will-prosecute-Arroyo
But [B]
[/B]clarified to the group calling itself [B]Philippines for Righteous Governance[/B] that he had not made up his mind regarding the presidency, and that he would rather be a convener of ethical and reform-minded leaders who would seek the top posts in the government.
The group gathered at the house of businessman Patrick Pantaleon in the upscale subdivision Forbes Park in Makati City and called on Panlilio and other “nontraditional politicians†to join forces to win the presidency against Arroyo administration and opposition candidates. [B]The names of preachers Bro. Eddie Villanueva and Bro. Mike Velarde, Chief Justice Reynato Puno, and even detained Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim were mentioned.[/B]
Panlilio agreed to talk about his possible platform on Pantaleon’s invitation.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/video/nation/04/06/09/punos-moral-force-movement-gains-support
[B]Puno’s moral force movement gains support[/B]
04/06/2009 8:54 PM
Sinuportahan ng United Methodist Church sa Kamaynilaan ang Moral Force Movement na sinimulan ni Chief Justice Reynato Puno. Pero iwas-pulitika pa rin ang punong mahistrado kahit pa marami raw ang gustong makisakay sa kanyang programa. Nagpa-Patrol, Marieton Pacheco. TV Patrol World, Abril 6, 2009