Full circle

DEADER THAN dead.
That is the Lakas-Kampi party, to hype the words by House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman the weekend just past.
Locked in mortal combat with Quezon Representative Danilo Suarez over the minority leadership, Lagman was emphatic: “There is no more Lakas-Kampi, there is only Lakas-CMD with a few remnants of Kampi most of whom formed their own party, the NUP (National Unity Party).”
Lagman, chairman of Lakas-CMD, earlier accused Lakas-CMD chair emeritus Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of plotting his ouster from her hospital-arrest bed in favour of Suarez.
Lakas-CMD evolved from the Lakas-NUCD formed in to prop the candidacy of Fidel V. Ramos who lost the LDP convention to House Speaker Ramon Mitra. Kampi was founded as the Kabalikat ng Mamamayang Pilipino in 1998 to provide a party for GMA, and merged with Lakas to form what was then the union of the two biggest political parties in the Philippines.
A monolith, that union eventually, came to be.
A column titled “Legacy” we wrote sometime in March 2008, thus:
"LET US work hard together for the good of the nation and for our party’s victory in 2010, when by the mighty hand of Lakas and the blessings and support of the Filipino people, I shall pass on the torch of national leadership in a milieu of tranquility, justice, hope and economic well-being for our beloved countrymen.”
With that statement spoken at the national directorate assembly of the Lakas-CMD, has President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo delivered her legacy speech?
Don’t know really but GMA said so much and meant little with that simple paragraph…
There is some cocky sureness that the merger of Lakas and Kampi which GMA endorsed during the assembly will not only win in 2010 but will dominate Philippine politics in “a two-decade period.”
Why, the usually God-invoking GMA did not even need to ejaculate “Providence” to ensure victory and domination, confident of “the mighty hand of Lakas” and the “blessings and support of the Filipino people” as the only requisites…
“Our merged party (Lakas-Kampi) will be a colossus that calls to mind Mahathir of Malaysia, whose decades- old dominant political machinery, supported by key business groups, provided the underpinning for Malaysia’s development.” Ironically, on the same day the President said this, her model – Malaysia’s United Malays National Organization – suffered an embarrassing electoral debacle.
Opposition leader and former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim made a spectacular political comeback after being sacked in 1998, tortured, tried and convicted in court – for sodomy, among others – and imprisoned. Anwar is a friend of the pardoned Erap Estrada. Some foreboding signs here?
Forebodings – of doom, we sensed then.
Again, in August 2009, we found time to write here under the title “The Party’s over”
PAMPANGA IS “99.5 percent” the bailiwick of the newly merged Lakas-CMD-Kampi Party.
So enthused 2nd District Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo as 311 elected officials at all levels took their oath of office as members of the administration party before a beaming President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
“Higanteng partido (giant party),” Mikey’s enthusiasm could not be contained, notwithstanding the conspicuous absence from the oath-taking rites of notable Pampanga political leaders Senator Lito Lapid, his son former Gov. Mark Lapid, Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao, governor-in-waiting Lilia “Nanay Baby” Pineda, and 4th District Rep. Anna York Bondoc-Sagum.
Their very absence may well tell a story totally different from Mikey’s.
For now though, let us indulge Mikey’s fancy
So what’s with the “99.5 percent”?
Said Mikey: “That 0 .5 percent, we can do without that person. But he’s free to join us.” You’re a dummy if you did not know whom Mikey referred to there.
“This is a party of politicians and sectors,” Mikey said. A potent combination in winning elections there, he did not have to say.
And to the President, the devotion of the son and the obeisance of a vassal:
“We believe you…We love you. These are the generals of your army that will ensure the votes for your presidential anointee.”
Even as he admitted to some “squabbles “ within the ranks, Mikey affirmed that local officials have “united for GMA.”…
Watching Monday’s oath-taking event and reading accounts of it pricked my sense of déjà vu: some trip down memory lane with all feeling of dread and none of nostalgia.
It’s the Marcos era there all over again.
“Higanteng partido” was the Kilusan Bagong Lipunan (KBL), the lone monolith built upon the remains of the Liberal Party (LP) and the Nacionalista Party (NP). Yes, Viring, we once had a two-party system here, just like in the States. Patterned after the States’, as a matter of fact: the LP, a poor clone of the Democratic Party; the NP a third-rate trying hard Grand Old Party copycat, to paraphrase Sharon there. Cuneta, the megastar that is, not the Israeli hawk Ariel.
Not only 99.5 percent but all of 100 percent was the whole Philippines a KBL bailiwick, all semblance of opposition – no matter how rag-tag – losing either the elections or life itself. A case in point: the 1978 Batasan elections in Metro Manila where Ninoy Aquino was soundly beaten by one unknown septuagenarian named Floro.
More than “we believe you…we love you,” it was “we adore you…we glorify you” then, total obeisance to the Great Ferdinand and the Beautiful Imelda being the order of the day.
Yet, for all the power, the kingdom and the glory of Marcos’ KBL, it took but a widow in yellow to end its reign, it took but a simple housewife to sweep it to history’s dustbin.
Déjà vu, nay, some karmic cycle ominous here?
Deader than dead.
So Lagman declared that the Lakas-Kampi coalition has “ceased to exist.”
The karmic cycle is complete. Sic transit gloria mundi. Thus passes the glory of the world.