The Midterm Blame Game Has Started, and It’s Still a Family Affair

By Joey Salgado

In a room filled with media and campaign staff but only one out of six winning administration candidates, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. reacted to his coalition’s poor showing in the midterms with a shrug.

“We all wish we had better results but, you know, we live to fight another day,” he said during the coalition’s thanksgiving dinner Saturday night.

He closed with a by now familiar appeal: “Put the politics aside and get on with the work of nation building.”

Someone should give the President a reality check.

With the looming impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, politics, the single-combat-take-no-prisoners variety, will eat up most of his time, denying him precious sleep and the luxury of chilling to the music of Duran Duran.

The sooner the Vice President is neutered politically, the more time the President will have to focus on his legacy, or what he calls “nation building.”

This political war would require enlisting the most cunning, disciplined, and ruthless operators he can find. Since the President will be putting his and his family’s fate and fortunes on the line, these should be people that he can trust.

Oddly, the President’s most trusted people seem more concerned at the moment with turfing and salvaging reputations.

All in the family

In the last few days we have been treated to a public knife fight involving two high-profile family members.
Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, Alyansa campaign manager who is married to a Romualdez, is fighting off charges of mismanaging the midterm campaign by blaming the Vice President’s impeachment. The impeachment was initiated last year by the House “supermajority” led by Speaker Martin Romualdez, the President’s cousin.

Tiangco’s post-mortem contradicts survey results and conventional analysis linking the sudden drop in voter preference for administration candidates to the arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte in March, a controversial move that the President himself green-lighted. Alyansa candidates who had dominated previous surveys were not able to regain their high preference numbers, even in administration bailiwicks.

Romualdez has wisely refused to engage Tiangco but his allies in the House quickly came to his defense by puncturing the campaign manager’s reading of the election results. Out of 115 congressmen who voted to impeach Duterte, 100 were reelected, they said. In the Duterte stronghold of Mindanao, 36 out of 44 congressmen who signed the Vice President’s impeachment were reelected.

And before anyone could make a strong play for the speakership - including Tiangco who admitted, in a television interview, that he was “open” to the idea if it would help the President and if his “colleagues would allow it” - leaders of the major political parties at the House declared their support for Romualdez.

“Tapos na. The Speaker has the numbers,” a ranking House leader said.

It was a clear message from the Romualdez allies. Replace the Speaker and the President would face a mutiny at a time when he needs to full backing of the House the most.

Redemption for the Speaker?

Romualdez has been rumored to be shut out from the President’s inner circle, albeit temporarily, for disobeying instructions to wait until after the midterms before impeaching the Vice President. The Alyansa debacle and the impeachment trial of the Vice President could give him a shot at redemption.

He has already beefed up the House prosecution panel by bringing in two legal heavyweights: former senator and justice secretary Leila de Lima, incarcerated on trumped-up drug charges by the Vice President’s father, and human rights lawyer Chel Diokno.

De Lima and Diokno will join a team of lawmakers already skilled at the art of playing mind games with the Vice President. They also possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the issues raised in the articles of impeachment.

As for Tiangco, we should give him the benefit of the doubt. In calling out Romualdez, he may have been engaging in misdirection. Acknowledging that the Duterte arrest led to the dismal showing of the Alyansa would be admitting that the President was personally responsible for the midterm fiasco. Tiangco could be simply trying to insulate the President from the political fallout.

From Marcos versus Marcos to Romualdez versus a nominal Romualdez, the family drama is playing out as political theater. The Dutertes must be having a laugh. But for how long?

This article also appears in Rappler