Vultures ‘R’ Us

By Antonio C. Abaya
Written on Feb. 02, 2009

Look! Up in the sky!
It’s a bird!
It’s a plane!
It’s…..a vulture!

Circling the land, looking for another vulture with which to mate and produce more baby vultures to make the picking and plucking of dying fauna and decaying carcasses faster and more systematic.

This is the image that comes to mind whenever I read ever so often about the on-again and off-again merger charade of the Lakas-CMD and Kampi political parties.

No less than the Mother of All Vultures, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who is the chairwoman of Lakas-CMD and the titular head of Kampi, has issued a call to all the other vultures “to face the electoral challenge of 2010 with righteousness and confidence.” (Sounds of vomiting in the background.) “There is basically no ideological differences in our platforms. Merging Lakas-CMD and Kampi will keep us on track and firmly focused on our vision of getting the country by 2010 well on the road to (the) First World in 20 years… ” (More sounds of retching in the background.)

When he was editing and publishing, first the Daily Globe, later Today, Congressman Teddy Boy Locsin often fondly referred to Lakas-CMD as “the party of thieves.” I wonder how Teddy Boy would characterize Kampi. The party of streetwalkers?.

President Arroyo was correct in at least one observation: “there are no ideological differences between Lakas-CMD and Kampi.” And, one might add, the Liberal Party, the Nacionalista Party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition, the LDP-Laban, the Partido ng Masang Pilipino.

The only political party in the Philippines with an ideology fundamentally different from the others is the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) of Joma Sison, which wants to establish a Maoist government and society here under a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ with monopoly of power for the CPP. Which is not fundamentally different from the goals of the Bayan Muna party list, as Bayan Muna Cong. Teddy Casino has candidly admitted in several TV interviews.

The Ang Kapatiran party of Nandy Pacheco also has an ideology or party platform, and it is specifically based on the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, which means the party rejects the use of artificial methods of birth control. I promised Nandy that I would examine and critique his party’s ideology or party platform in a future article.

But offhand, I doubt the ability of Ang Kapatiran to mount an effective challenge to the established trapo parties, unless it can recruit a nationally revered elder statesman like Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno to be its standard bearer in the 2010 polls. Which is also doubtful since CJ Puno is a Methodist and is unlikely to be comfortable with a party platform specifically based on the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

In other words, to be a viable party with universal appeal, Ang Kapatiran has to outgrow its narrow Roman Catholic orientation and re-engineer itself as a secular and non-sectarian party

With the exception of the CPP and Ang Kapatiran, political parties in the Philippines are indistinguishable from each other. They have no differences in ideology or party platform. They are merely machineries for getting their candidates elected. After the elections, the winning party or parties concentrate on dividing the spoils in Congress and in the Cabinet, and on recruiting opportunistic turncoats from the other parties.. The losing party or parties concentrate on lodging electoral protests on the grounds that they have been cheated.

The absence of any ideological or platform differences among the trapo parties encourages opportunistic political turncoatism: Filipinos trapos change political parties with scandalous ease because it does not involve compromising matters of principles, which they do not have in the first place.

There is virtually no discussion or debate on national or international issues. The opposition party or parties conduct endless investigations on the alleged corruption scandals involving the party or parties in power. The party or parties in power protect their bureaucrats from being harassed by the opposition. But in the final analysis, no one is found guilty of anything and no one goes to jail for anything..

The final calculus is in winning the most seats in Congress and the Senate, the most local government positions at the municipal and governor levels so that the party or parties in power can railroad through its/their most self-serving advocacies. In the case of the Lakas-CMD/Kampi merger, what holds them together is the over-arching ambition of President Arroyo to remain in power beyond 2010

In February 2005, then Kampi President Ronaldo Puno announced the miniscule party’s strategic goal to become the largest party in the country by the year 2007. I wrote in May 2005 that this was meant to engineer a shift to parliamentary to enable President Arroyo to remain in power beyond 2010, as prime minister

I was right. In 2006, there were two maneuvers, precisely towards this goal: a people’s initiative signature campaign and a move to convene the Lower House into a constituent assembly without the participation of the oppositionist Senate, both of which were meant to engineer a shift towards parliamentary.

Both maneuvers were orchestrated by then Speaker Jose de Venecia, with the active support of former President Fidel Ramos, both of Lakas-CMD. The maneuvers’ timetable was meant to create a temporary or interim parliament by 2007 in which JdV would have been interim prime minister from 2007 to 2010, at which point which GMA would then metamorphose from president to full-time prime minister, without skipping a beat

That both attempts failed has not dampened the perseverance of the avaricious vultures. A merger of Lakas-CMD and Kampi, according to their calculations, would give the emerging Vultures Inc. 143 seats, out of 238, in the Lower House, 56 governors, 89 city mayors, and 1,092 municipal mayors.

Not content with this phenomenal powerhouse, the political operators behind the still-to-be-finalized merger of Lakas-CMD and Kampi are already talking to another group of vultures, the Nationalist People’s Coalition, for a three-sided behemoth, Vultures ‘R’ Us, which will have 172 seats in the Lower House, 61 governors, 104 city mayors, and 1,232 municipal mayors. (Standard Today, Feb. 2) Not surprisingly, the Atiena wing of the Liberal Party has expressed interest in joining the merger.

Vultures of the same feathers flock together. And prey together. .A family of vultures that preys together, stays together.

Notice that in all these maneuvers, there are no inter- or intra-party debates on the merits or demerits of parliamentary, on the merits or demerits of federalism, on the merits or demerits of the proposed stimulus package to cushion the impact of the economic meltdown, on the merits or demerits of the proposed peace agreement with Muslim separatists, on how to reintegrate into the domestic labor force the tens, even hundreds, of thousands of overseas workers who will lose or have lost their jobs abroad, or the merits or demerits of a population management program, or the merits or demerits of free trade and globalization in the face of the global recession.

Nothing. All deliberations boil down to how many positions of power at all levels Vultures ‘R’ Us will wind up with after disbursing billions of pesos from that P330 billion stimulus package, to achieve the end goal: GMA Forever. *****

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