Early skirmishes

In 2011 the year ended with the administration and its allies preparing for war to unseat a chief justice. The process was wrenching and there were many moments when it seemed like President Aquino would suffer a serious blow.

He didn’t, and this year, Renato Corona became the first Philippine chief justice to be removed from office. Corona largely dug his own grave, but his ouster was still considered a victory for P-Noy.

Before the year was over, P-Noy scored two more victories, this time over the Catholic Church in the passage of the Reproductive Health law (endorsed by non-administration legislators), and over powerful lobbies in the approval of sin tax reforms. (He signed the RH bill into law before Christmas after all, although the announcement of the enactment was put off till last Friday).

The year is ending with P-Noy and his allies gearing for a different battle: the midterm elections in May.

While having a rubberstamp legislature is bad for a democracy, any administration wants an easy time in pushing forward its legislative agenda without always having to rely on the pork barrel system to win congressional support.

P-Noy and his team must also be aware that they need local executives on board if they want lasting reforms and good governance.

Three years – what’s left of P-Noy’s term – is a short time to lay the groundwork for irreversible reforms. The task will be made easier if the President and his allies win big in May.

So far they are going about it in a messy way. At the rate they are going, Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia is looking like a victim of political persecution, and we know how Pinoy voters express their sympathy for the underdog.

Administration officials insist that there is basis for Garcia’s six-month suspension after she was found guilty of grave abuse of authority, based on an administrative complaint filed two years ago by a now-deceased vice governor.

One Palace official lamented that for the administration, this is a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The administration will have to do better than this; if it has ammunition against Garcia, it should be produced soon.

In Pinoy politics, timing is everything. In Garcia’s case, it’s not just the fact that her suspension comes on the heels of the filing of a plunder complaint over jueteng against another non-administration governor of a vote-rich province, Amado Espino Jr. of Pangasinan. It’s also the duration of the suspension, which will put the resources of the Cebu provincial government out of Garcia’s reach until nearly the end of her term in June.

She still has her father and brother sitting in Congress, with all the available resources courtesy of Juan de la Cruz that can be utilized during the forthcoming campaign. But the equity of the incumbent counts a lot in a political campaign in this country.

That equity is now controlled by the acting governor, Agnes Almendras Magpale, reportedly a sister of Cabinet Secretary Jose Rene Almendras. Magpale, Cebu’s vice governor, is allied with the ruling Liberal Party (LP)’s bet for governor, the son and namesake of former chief justice Hilario Davide Jr., who will be pitted against Garcia’s congressman-brother.

With her three terms up as governor, Garcia is seeking to replace her brother in Congress. In 2010, she won against the younger Davide by a narrow margin of 96,341 votes – 639,587 against his 543,246. Backed by state machinery, Davide could have a better chance this time – and so could LP candidates running for the Senate. That’s why the leadership of Garcia’s United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) has jumped into the fray.

The administration is trying to portray this case – and that of Governor Espino’s legal travails – as nothing more than due process taking its course. For observers of local politics, however, the two cases look like a prelude to bigger political contests in May 2013, whose results in turn will help determine the outcome of the biggest battle of all: the race for the presidency in 2016.

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Inevitably Garcia’s case is turning into a proxy war between the two men believed to be the top contenders for the presidential race: Vice President Jejomar Binay of UNA and LP president (on leave) Mar Roxas, whose Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) served Garcia’s suspension order.

While the order emanated from the Office of the President, which also conducted the investigation of the administrative complaint against the Cebu governor, it is Roxas and not P-Noy who is getting the brunt of the ire of Garcia’s supporters.

The supporters have denounced “Mar-tial law” in Cebu. Garcia’s brother has sued Roxas and several police officers for robbery, for refusing to return tents seized when a pro-Garcia vigil at the capitol was broken up. The tents reportedly belong to a private individual.

So far the administration seems unfazed. Over the holidays, rumors circulated that among the local executives in the crosshairs of the LP and Malacañang is Lilia Pineda of Pampanga, Arroyo’s vote-rich home province.

LP stalwarts may want to find out, perhaps through reputable surveys, whether crippling non-LP local executives until after the elections will backfire on Roxas in 2016.

Neutral observers see the early skirmishes as nothing more than politics as usual. For the non-aligned, the principal politics-related concern as a new year dawns is the conduct of the 2013 elections.

For 2013, among P-Noy’s objectives, if he is on legacy mode, must be to make the first major electoral exercise under his watch a showcase of credible and orderly elections.

He will have to do this even as his actions indicate a belief in the saying that all is fair in love, war and politics.

Happy New Year to all!