Junked

Sen. Imee Marcos has become grist for the political rumor mill.

It seems Imee, seeking reelection to the Senate, has been junked from the administration-endorsed slate. In the last political rally held for this slate, she was noticeably absent. Her younger brother, the President, likewise neglected endorsing her candidacy.

Imee is not the only pro-administration candidate absenting herself from the rallies that routinely centers on the President’s remarks. Camille Villar, seeking to succeed her mother in the Senate, likewise found it more convenient to be absent from political rallies where presidential utterances are more widely covered than whatever the candidates themselves say.

The junking of Imee (or, Imee’s abandonment of her place in this campaign) reflects the stresses brought about by the deepening polarization between pro-administration and pro-Duterte forces.

This polarization began when Vice President Sara Duterte resigned her Cabinet post and was subsequently impeached by the Lower House. It worsened precipitously after former president Rodrigo Duterte was unceremoniously grabbed at the airport and flown off to detention at the ICC in The Hague.

Whatever the legal controversies involved in this event, it does seem the administration conveniently exported a political problem. Some called this a kidnapping. The safer term is probably “rendition” – the term first used officially by the US military when it subcontracted the torture and detention of prisoners of war to third parties.

A week after the elder Duterte was deported to The Hague, Imee convened a Senate hearing on the matter. As chair, she was sharply critical of the procedures used to deport the former president. Her tone and her interrogation of senior administration officials did not please the Palace, obviously. Thus the presidential snub.

If Imee is indeed junked, this will be the first time in recent memory that an administration senatorial ticket was purged of an uncooperative candidate (or two). This is nothing short of jarring.

Remarkably, all the other candidates belonging to the pro-administration slate have maintained a studied and uncomfortable silence about the deportation of the former president. In their political rallies and press statements, it is as if the event did not occur at all.

This studied silence betrays the grave political discomfort the actions of the administration brought to its own candidates.

The hurried and unceremonious deportation of the elder Duterte has apparently caused a political backlash. Protest rallies have been held by Duterte supporters in several cities in Mindanao and the Visayas. Protests have also broken out in several European, North American, Australian and Japanese cities.

These rallies were organized spontaneously by migrant Filipinos in these places. Rodrigo Duterte enjoys strong political support from migrant Filipino communities as well as Visayan-speaking voters.

The majority of conversations I have had the past two weeks were with people who strongly disagreed with the way this administration treated Duterte – independent of their opinion about the “drug war.”

Obviously, the hurried “rendition” of the elder Duterte has drawn a strong backlash. Subsequent opinion polls should give us a better grasp of the depth and breadth of this political backlash.

To be sure, President BBM is particularly vulnerable to an angry backlash. His trust and job approval ratings have been dropping perilously the past few months. In one survey I studied, he has been substantially outpolled by Vice President Sara. This is remarkable. Sara has no job to speak of since resigning her Cabinet post and suffering serious cuts in her VP budget.

The polarization between the Marcos and Duterte camps will definitely take a toll on the administration’s ability to attract voter support for the candidate it endorses. To begin with, two solid command-vote apparatuses – the Kingdom of Jesus Christ and the Iglesia ni Cristo – have ceased to be administration allies.

The spokesman for the Iglesia came out openly critical of the way Rodrigo Duterte was treated. Recall that last January, the same organization mounted a humongous rally opposing the impeachment of Sara.

From the start, Imee Marcos wanted to run as an independent candidate. She did not want to be caught in the vise of polarization. BBM loyalists thought this did not look good. Against her wishes, a slot in the pro-administration slate was reserved for her. In the few rallies she actually attended, it seems she had to be badgered by administration handlers.

It certainly gives even worse visuals that those who pressed Imee to run under the administration banner are now trying to purge her from the slate. We are now treated to a Marcos-versus-Marcos spectacle.

The worst possible visuals will be Imee losing in her reelection bid. At the moment, opinion polls place her somewhere near the cutoff line.

An Imee electoral loss will be interpreted as an anti-Marcos vote. That will not serve the purposes of those frantically trying to build the foundations of a restored Marcos dynasty – ironically, promising “unity.”

I have had a few short but precious conversations with Imee over the decades since we were classmates in graduate school. She always impressed me with her sharp readings of voter disposition. She was reared, after all, in a very political environment.

Based on those brief conversations, I imagine Imee has a worse reading of the anti-administration backlash than I am prepared to concede. Her abandonment of her place in the administration slate reinforces her image of intellectual independence and shields her from voter wrath.