MANILA, Philippines – The most trusted aide of President Rodrigo Duterte, the daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and an architect of Duterte’s bloody war on drugs formally won as Philippine senators on Wednesday, May 22.

Duterte aide Bong Go, Marcos daughter Imee Marcos, and former police chief Bato dela Rosa were among 12 senators-elect who walked the red carpet to an air-conditioned tent at the Marcos-built Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Pasay City [1].

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) proclaimed the 12 new senators at the PICC more than a week after the senatorial polls wiped out candidates from the opposition, tightening Duterte’s grip on Congress.

The other winners include actor Lito Lapid, who recently starred in a blockbuster TV series; movie star Bong Revilla, who is facing 16 counts of graft [2]; children of political families; and self-styled independent candidates like Grace Poe.

Nine out of 12 senators-elect have openly allied themselves with the Duterte administration [3]. It is the first time in 80 years that the opposition didn’t win any national legislative seat [4].

Here is the list of the 12 winning senators along with their number of votes [5]:

Cynthia Villar - 25,283,727
Grace Poe - 22,029,788
Bong Go - 20,657,702
Pia Cayetano - 19,789,019
Bato dela Rosa - 19,004,225
Sonny Angara - 18,161,862
Lito Lapid - 16,965,464
Imee Marcos - 15,882,628
Francis Tolentino - 15,510,026
Koko Pimentel - 14,668,665
Bong Revilla - 14,624,445
Nancy Binay - 14,504,936

“These 12 now stand with us today to accept the responsibility and duty that we, the voters, have entrusted to them,” said Comelec Chairman Sheriff Abas, capping a weeklong tally marred by vote transmission woes [6] and other problems such as hundreds of defective SD cards [7].

The front-runner in the Senate race, Cynthia Villar, delivered the acceptance speech on behalf of the other winners.

Villar is a reelectionist senator whose vast financial resources, networks, and decades in politics helped her overtake former front-runner Poe. Villar is also the wife of businessman Manny Villar, the closest rival of Benigno Aquino III in the 2010 presidential elections. (READ: The rise of Cynthia Villar: How politics, money, networks made her No. 1)

In her acceptance speech, Villar picked up from her campaign slogan and vowed a “hanep na buhay” (a good life) for millions of Filipinos.

She also thanked Duterte and his daughter Sara, who is positioning herself as kingmaker, for their support. Observers see the midterm polls as a prelude to the 2022 presidential elections, where Sara Duterte is widely touted as a possible candidate [8]. (In Philippine politics, front-runners in senatorial elections, like Villar, often seek higher posts in suceeding elections.)

“Thank you po sa kanilang mag-ama (Thank you to the father and daughter),” said Villar.

The proclamation ended with the senators-elect, except for Poe and Binay, together making Duterte’s trademark fist pump.

Paterno Esmaquel II
@paterno_ii

• Rappler.com. Published 1:01 PM, May 22, 2019. Updated 11:42 PM, May 22, 2019:
https://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2019/231245-12-new-senators-proclaimed-philippines-may-22-2019?utm

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 THE RISE OF CYNTHIA VILLAR

How politics, money, networks made her No. 1. Hers was not a one-time surprise ascent but a deliberate, steady, and sure climb.

• Senator Cynthia Villar tops the 2019 senatorial elections, overtaking former front-runner Senator Grace Poe.

• Villar, like other reelectionist senators, enjoys the privileges of an incumbent politician: media mileage, name recall, and office resources.

• Unlike the rest, Villar has everything working for her: vast financial resources, presidential endorsement, public and private networks, decades of politics, and a ‘low profile’ campaign.

• The senator, whose family enjoys close ties with President Rodrigo Duterte, says she has no plans to run in 2022.

MANILA, Philippines – With the perfect mix of politics, business, and influence, reelectionist Senator Cynthia Villar emerged as the top senatorial candidate in the 2019 midterm elections.

Hers was not a one-time surprise ascent but a deliberate, steady, and sure climb. It was decades worth of politics, business, advocacies, and name recall.

Even Villar herself said she was not surprised by the outcome because preelection surveys predicted it.

“Because last April and May, there were 3 surveys – two from Pulse Asia and one from SWS (Social Weather Stations) – which said I would get the top spot. Of course, whether it will come about during Election Day, we could not say because it is the delivery of votes. but it seems the surveys are correct. I am not surprised but I am happy that the survey results are now manifesting in the vote counting,” Villar said in a mix of Filipino and English during an interview with GMA-7.

Villar comes from a wealthy political family in Las Piñas in the south of Metro Manila. Her family, the Aguilars, have held sway over the city for decades.

It was her husband Manny who first ventured into politics and became president of the Nacionalista Party. In 2001, Cynthia ran and became the city’s congressional representative. She served for 9 years and was later replaced by her son Mark.

In 2009, the Villars were among the most vilified of families, owing to the controversies that hounded the C5 project. The issue cost them the 2010 presidential bid of her husband, who was former Senate president and House speaker.

In 2013, she ran for the Senate and ranked 10^th in the elections.

Six years after, in 2019 – and the C5 controversy behind her – she ranked first in the senatorial polls, surpassing popular candidate Grace Poe.

As University of the Philippines political science assistant professor Gene Pilapil said, everything was working out for Villar. But how did she do it?

Advantage of the incumbency

In general, incumbent officials have an advantage over first-time candidates and those who would have been gone from the public eye.

Villar, as one of the 7 reelectionists, surely enjoyed this privilege, according to UP professor Jean Franco.

Under the 17^th Congress, Villar served as the chairperson of the Senate committees on agriculture and agrarian reform. She is also a known ally of President Rodrigo Duterte.

“You have 6 years in office, you have an office budget that you can use to promote your advocacy or to promote your name all over the country. Plus whatever the Senate does, the media also cover that. It also helps reelectionists,” Franco told Rappler.

“She’s had a lot of media mileage the past 3 years, whether good or bad, ang taas ng awareness (the people have high awareness of her),” she added.

Indeed, the senator, like her colleagues, went around the country to promote her advocacies of livelihood, agriculture, and environment.

While a candidate could not win on popularity alone, Villar has many other things working for her.

Money, money, money

Launching a national campaign is no easy feat. One needs millions in cash – something that is not an issue for someone like Villar, who continues to be the richest senator.

“Funding is very important. You are embarking on a nationwide campaign in a synchronized elections. It’s very, very expensive,” Franco said.

Villar declared a net worth of more than P3.611 billion with no liability at the end of 2017. Her net worth slightly grew from her P3.606 billion in 2016.

In 2019, her husband was declared the richest man in the Philippines, boasting a net worth of $5.5 billion.

The Villar family owns the Philippines’ biggest homebuilder Vista Land and shopping-center developer Starmalls Incorporated. They also own Golden Bria, a housing and condominium developer.

Data from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) showed that Villar spent P80.8 million for political advertisements from January 2018 to January 2019, way before the official campaign period started on February 12.

The cost of Villar’s pre-campaign ads amounts to just 2.20% of her declared net worth, barely making any dent in her coffers.

During the campaign period, from February 12 to April 30, Villar ranked 2^nd among the candidates who spent the most on political ads.

Villar spent an estimated P400.2 million while top spender Mar Roxas paid an estimated P463.3 million.

On top of this, Villar owns a private plane, which made it easier for her and her team to travel to the 81 provinces in the country.

High-ranking sources from PDP-Laban – where Villar is a guest candidate – and the Senate said Villar was able to visit around 3 to 4 areas or provinces per day. Many candidates were not as privileged, as some had to contend with delayed commercial flights in airports.

One source said Villar would sometimes invite other candidates but it was not clear who these bets were. A separate source said she was often seen travelling with her party mates Imee Marcos and Pia Cayetano, who are also poised to win based on a partial, unofficial tally.

A number of the new senators also have their share of controversies, including being accused of violating certain laws and becoming subjects of investigations

Simple messaging and a ’low profile campaign’

But for Villar, wealth was not the reason for her high ranking, saying she made sure she had the “most low profile” campaign.

“No. If you look at the campaign ako nga ’yung pinaka-low profile ang campaign. I made sure na low profile ang campaign ko kasi nahihiya ako mag-high profile….Talaga namang simple ako. I’m proud to say simple akong tao, maski kampanya ko simple kasi ganun ako talaga,” Villar told reporters after casting her vote in Las Piñas.

(No. If you look at the campaign, I had the most low-profile campaign. I made sure I had the most low profile campaign because I’m shy about conducting a high-profile one....I am a really simple person. I’m proud to say I am a simple person, that is why even my campaign is simple because that’s who I really am.)

“’Di ba maganda din na gusto ka ng tao, hindi naman ’yung yaman mo, influential ka, but gusto ka ng tao (Isn’t it nice when people also like you. It’s not because of your wealth or because you’re influential, but it’s because people like you), that is very important,” she said.

Indeed, the senator conducted a steady and quiet campaign. She skipped televised debates and national fora, seldom commented on issues, intrigues, and controversies, and stuck to her messaging as “Mrs Hanapbuhay (Livelihood).”

“Hindi ka naman nakakarinig sa kanya ng anything (You could not hear anything from her) that will make people turn away from her,” Franco said.

Here are some of Villar’s key points in her campaign speeches:

• “Naniniwala po ako na ’pag may hanap-buhay ang tao, walang dahilan kung bakit tayo hindi makakaahon sa kahirapan.” (I believe that if people have jobs, there’s no reason we can’t escape poverty.)

• Says she has put up 1,932 livelhood projects and 1,855 farm schools all over the country.

• Vows to continue her advocacy to help ensure affordable food and help the agricultural sector.

• Promises to craft laws that will help uplift Filipinos from poverty.

Her “low-profile” strategy was apparent even before the campaign began. Villar rarely figured in issues. She had a stable run in the Senate as a staunch supporter of President Duterte.

Only a few minor issues were thrown against her. These included her call to prohibit unlimited rice in restaurants, which drew public ire. She immediately clarified the issue, averting possible problems.

Political alliances, Duterte’s endorsement

Manny Villar lost to former president Benigno Aquino III in the 2010 race. But their bitter past hardly stopped the Nacionalista Party (NP) from joining the Team PNoy administration coalition in 2013 – a move seen to have benefitted the NP as Aquino enjoyed high ratings at the time.

It was Manny Villar who inherited the NP, which an ailing former NP president Salvador “Doy” Laurel, had asked him to take over as shepherd.

After winning in 2013, Cynthia Villar became a part of the majority bloc in the 16^th Congress and was largely an ally of Aquino in pushing for his legislative agenda.

Fast forward to 2015, when there were talks the NP would support the presidential bid of Senator Grace Poe, the frontrunner at the time. Poe also visited the Villars’ hometown in Las Piñas City, where she held a rally and a motorcade. In the end, however, there were no formal announcements.

The Villars also supported the candidacy of then-Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who eventually won. Duterte himself revealed that the Villar couple convinced him to run and gave him cash as support.

“Sabi ni Speaker (Manny), pati ni ma’am (Cynthia), ’Rody, tumakbo ka. Baka makatulong ka pa sa bayan (Speaker and Ma’am told me, ’Rody, run for president. You might be able to help the country),’” Duterte said during a PDP-Laban rally in Bulacan in February.

“Nag-dinner kami... Nagdala siya ng pera sa bag. Sabi niya, ’Pang-umpisa mo lang kung gusto mo lang tumakbo. ’Pag hindi, iyo na ‘yan,’” he said. (We had dinner. He brought a bag and said, “You can use this to start your campaign if you want to run. If not, just take it.”)

This investment in Duterte paid off for the Villars, as they enjoyed close ties with the sitting President after he assumed office.

Their son Mark was later on appointed secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways, a post widely seen as presenting a conflict of interest situation.

Malls or housing developments near roads, highways, or public transport offer captured clients.

The good relationship between the Villar family and Duterte led to the presidential endorsement of Cynthia and her daughter Camille, who ran and won as Las Piñas representative.

On top of this, the NP also sealed an alliance with presidential daughter and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte’s Hugpong ng Pagbabago.

Franco said the “Duterte factor” contributed to Villar’s rise to the top spot, as a presidential endorsement was “a force to reckon with.”

Networks, ground support

Analysts said Villar’s networks, both in the public and private sectors, helped propel her to the top.

“One could not beat the network of their business empire.…I mean everything is going for her,” Franco told Rappler.

Under Duterte, the Villar family’s businesses also flourished and expanded. (READ: Duterte grants franchise to Villar-owned telecom systems)

From Ilocos Norte in North Luzon, Iloilo in Western Visayas, to Koronadal City in South Cotabato in Mindanao, Villar’s influence was felt. Vista Land, through Camella Homes, has numerous locations nationwide. Their mall chains are also expanding.

“It’s good to raise the private aspect of this….How the subdivisions, which may be strategically placed, up to what extent could they affect the performance in elections?” PIlapil said.

During PDP-Laban’s miting de avance, many of the Villar supporters who attended the event were employees of the Villars’ mall business.

“’Yung on the ground support talaga niya, ang formidable ng network and ng financial resources (She really has a formidable network, ground support, and financial resources),” Franco said.

Villar also established the Villar SIPAG (Social Institute for Poverty Alleviation and Governance) Foundation in 1992, which promotes her advocacies of livelihood, environment, and poverty alleviation. Many of her projects as a senator were done in partnership with the foundation.

Aside from this, analysts said Villar also benefitted from the machinery of HNP and the network of the NP, whose members include the Marcoses and Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto, and his wife Batangas 6^th District Representative Vilma Santos Recto.

“The NP network helped plus the Hugpong ng Pagbabago coalition has massive, impressive machinery,” Pilapil said.

In the 17^th Congress, the NP had 30 members in the House of Representatives and 9 others from allied party list groups. Data from the Commission on Elections show a total of 4,771 NP candidates who ran in the 2019 polls

The future: 2022

Villar has another 6 years to serve as senator. But with early talks about the 2022 presidential polls, questions abound: will she run for higher office? Will she try to gain what her husband lost in 2010?

For now, Villar said she would rather not dwell on it.

“I don’t think about [running for president] yet but I don’t think so, unless it will be given to me on a silver platter, I’m not going to exert any effort to be president. I’m really convinced you can work hard, you can be a senator through hard work and determination but becoming president is destiny. I really believe that,” she said in a mix of Filipino and English during an interview with radio dzMM.

She also said she does not want to vie for the Senate presidency because managing the chamber is a full-time job.

“I can do that but I don’t like that kind of work,” she said, adding that she does not want to give up her chairmanship of the agriculture committee.

But in politics, one never says never. A lot can happen in 3 years

TEXT BY CAMILLE ELEMIA

PHOTO BY ANGIE DE SILVA

• Rappler.com. Published 2:24 PM, May 15, 2019. Updated 9:17 AM, May 16, 2019:
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/230633-how-politics-money-networks-made-cynthia-villar-number-1-senate-race-2019

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 Elections results – Party lists

Hello reader,

It’s the least they could do. On Tuesday, May 21, Senator Kiko Pangilinan and Congressman Kit Belmonte quit their posts as president and secretary-general, respectively, of the once-mighty but now humiliated Liberal Party.

The LP needs more than resignations after the May 13 elections. It needs to fight irrelevance.

Come to think of it, only one opposition bloc survived the Duterte tsunami this month: the parties run by the leftist national democratic (ND) movement, in particular, Bayan Muna, ACT Teachers, and Gabriela.

The 3 militant parties are assured of returning to Congress – even as two of their partner organizations, Kabataan and Anakpawis, failed to make it this time.

That they managed to win despite the government’s full-court press on them tells us a lot.

One of the regions where the military attacked them ferociously through arrests and harassment – Calabarzon (Region IVA) – is their second best-performing region in terms of votes (see table above which shows the regional share of total votes received by Bayan Muna, ACT Teachers, Gabriela, and Akbayan).

In the National Capital Region (NCR), Gabriela had an outstanding showing, even way ahead of the other leftist organizations. We know too well, of course, that in Metro Manila households, where men are killed and families have to scrape for a living, it’s the women who keep their wits about them.

Outside Luzon, the 3 parties got respectable votes in two regions where, again, the police and the military tried to pummel them before and during the campaign: Western and Central Visayas, notably the Negros islands.

There’s a lot to crunch from the data of party-list votes, especially as we try to divine the future of this system of representation – originally designed to give room to marginalized sectors in the House – in a new political terrain where the Right, and its might, reigns.

IN BED WITH POWER

I would not point to mass-organizing as the only fuel in the national democrats’ victory in these elections. For it cannot be denied that prior to their falling-out in 2018, leaders and groups associated with the Makabayan bloc were in bed with President Rodrigo Duterte.

In December 2016, on the 6^th month of an unprecedented long ceasefire between the military and the communist New People’s Army, Duterte himself declared: “I am the President belonging to the Left.” He added, “The Reds would never demand my ouster. They will die for me, believe me.”

But there’s another sector that, in some ways, was also dying for him too: the military. And it is a sector that has a track record of ousting leaders. To Duterte, the choice was as clear as day, thus his decision to eventually divorce his ND friends and allow the military to – in Duterte lingo – “pulverize” them both in the battlefield and in the white areas where they got those votes.

Bayan Muna et al still received residual support from that failed relationship – if I were to hazard a guess on the factors that made it survive the onslaught of the Right in these polls.

To illustrate this, one simply has to look at what befell Akbayan in the last polls.

FIRST LOSS IN 2 DECADES

Akbayan’s failure to get even just one seat is a sorry tale for one of two longest-serving party-list groups in the House, which first took a crack at electoral politics – and won – in 1998. That was the year “Erap para sa mahirap” became president, when it was in vogue to be Left and when leftists joined the Erap bandwagon.

Akbayan’s most successful run happened 4 elections later, in 2010, when it breached the one million mark for the first time. Is it any coincidence that it also made the right bet then, supporting the candidacy of Noynoy Aquino, who won as president that year? Confident of its base in 2010, Akbayan even fielded Risa Hontiveros for senator, though she lost the first time. She tried again in 2013, and lost again. On her 3^rd try, in May 2016 just as Aquino was to step down from office, Risa finally made it to the Senate.

The May 13 polls – to put it unkindly – doomed both the liberals and Akbayan.

To be sure, Bayan Muna and its allied parties were also in bed with power even before Duterte.

When they made their first run in 2001, they were allied with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was installed president that year after Estrada’s ouster. The 2004 elections that followed expanded the NDs’ seats in the House. Like Akabayan with Aquino in 2010, the ND parties were allied with Arroyo then.

What lessons do we draw from all this? Let me know what you think! For comments, email me at glenda.gloria rappler.com

Glenda Gloria

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