The myth of unity

Here’s the opposition’s dirty little secret: There is no such thing as unity right now, and there probably won’t be when the polls close in May. And if the opposition really wants to win it all in next year’s elections, the first thing it has to do is perhaps to drop the pretense of seeking unity and accept that—as far as the presidential contest is concerned—it’s really every man for himself.

This is why people take with a judicious dash of salt Makati Mayor Jojo Binay’s announcement that he is no longer seeking the presidency and is now willing to act as a mediator between former President Joseph Estrada and Senator Noynoy Aquino, so that the opposition may come up with a united front in the coming elections. “I have always said that if my bid for the presidency will be an obstacle [to] achieving unity within the opposition, I am willing to give way,” Binay said.

Unity in the opposition is, of course, a long-running theme of Estrada’s, who says he will be “forced” to run if the anti-administration forces fail to come up with a common presidential candidate next May. But the charade that is Erap’s quest for a united opposition may have been inadvertently exposed by Estrada himself, after Aquino declared for the highest post in the land this week and promptly drew a reaction from the former President to the effect that he would not give way for the only son of Ninoy and Cory.

“It doesn’t change a thing. My plan is unchanged,” Estrada told Agence France-Presse, commenting on both Aquino’s declaration and Binay’s announcement. “Let the people decide, not the elites.”

Erap’s response may have also uncovered a deep divide that still exists in the opposition, which is apparently united only in its dislike for the current administration. When the former President referenced the “elites,” after all, he wasn’t merely referring to the politically pedigreed families that Aquino belongs to but also the senator’s upper and middle-class supporters—the same people who gave Erap such a hard time when he was in Malacañang and who eventually led the movement to oust him in 2001.

(Binay, of course, can always be relied on to side with Aquino, whose mother practically gave the former human-rights lawyer and street activist the city of Makati in 1986 in the division of political spoils after the People Power revolution. No matter how much the mayor loves Erap, he can be expected to don his Cory yellows if it came down to a choice between Estrada and Aquino. So much for unity and its self-appointed mediator.)

The same divisive dynamic is at work elsewhere within the opposition, between the leftist party-list organizations that have thrown their support to the opposition cause and the fledgling Aquino campaign. As Rep. Rafael Mariano of the party-list Anakbayan says, Aquino must first resolve the festering, decades-old dispute between the farmers and the management of the Aquino-Cojuangco family’s Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, if Cory’s son wants to be a true leader of the opposition.

And, finally, there are the other presumptive candidates from the anti-Arroyo ranks who, like Erap, have dallied and dithered about running, while at the same time virtually ignoring Estrada’s call for a united candidate. If the camps of Senators Manny Villar and Chiz Escudero, to name just two, are united in anything apart from their distaste for the current occupant of the presidential palace, it is probably in the unspoken belief that Erap only seeks unity to have them rally behind him as he seeks an Estrada restoration in 2010, and not to defeat some patsy fielded by the administration.

And even with Noynoy now in the mix, it’s doubtful if any of these major opposition contenders will give way, either, for the same reason. If they won’t back down for Erap, who is way up there with them in voter preference surveys, they can’t be expected to go away for Noynoy, who is still largely an unknown factor.

This is, after all, the age of the multi-party system, another legacy of Noynoy’s mom, just like the 1987 Constitution. All elections after 1986 have featured a lot more than just two serious candidates, and no winner has ever won a clear majority of the vote, or more votes than all the other presidential candidates combined—not even Erap himself, the supposed darling of the masses, in his 1998 “landslide.”

Opposition unity, like world peace, definitely sounds good. Whether it can really be accomplished—especially in time for the May elections—is an entirely different matter altogether.

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Of course, only Erap has really been all over the place calling for unity. Despite Binay’s decision to join Erap in this quest —as had, to a certain extent, Mar Roxas and Pampanga Gov. Ed Panlilio before him—no one really considers the Makati mayor a major political force outside of his own affluent city.

And given the determination displayed by Aquino and the yellow hordes that claim to support him, it is unlikely that the Cory forces will ever agree to be subsumed by Erap’s faction of the opposition, no matter how much Estrada may want that to happen. If anything, Noynoy’s entry into the race has all but eliminated any hope that opposition unity will ever be seriously discussed again, outside of Estrada’s Polk Street digs.

Erap’s recognition of an imminent exodus from the ranks a still-to-be-united opposition of the Cory Aquino loyalists, who will necessarily form the hard core of Noynoy’s base, may have forced the former President’s hand. Now he will probably be left with no choice but to run as promised—and he will be just another strong candidate in an opposition-dominated field with other bets that are equally strong.

Unlike in 1998, Estrada will find that next year’s campaign won’t be a walk in the park for him, assuming that he does run. And for someone who has never had much political opposition to his various campaigns in a long career in office, the possibility of an Estrada defeat this time around can be really daunting for him.

But considering the other problems Estrada is facing in his bid to return to the palace, perhaps disunity among the opposition’s ranks should really be the least of his concerns. The Supreme Court, led now by the chief justice who wrote the decision legitimizing his ouster in 2001, has yet to rule on the legality of his assertion that he can run next year, after all.

Then there’s the small matter of Senator Panfilo Lacson’s threat to “tell all” about Erap’s presidency in a Senate privilege speech on Monday, at a time when both Lacson and Estrada are being linked again to the reopened Dacer-Corbito double murder case. Really, Erap has enough on his plate as it is, and he would be well advised to focus on his own problems first before attempting to convert his fellow oppositionists to the pie-in-the-sky faith of a united opposition.

Stranger things have happened in Philippine politics in the past, of course. But if a united opposition whose real leaders can selflessly unite behind a common presidential candidate (especially when there is no perceived need by those concerned to do so) is one of them, then perhaps even Erap—unity’s foremost apostle—will be surprised. –Jojo Robles, Manila Standard Today