A fresh political party has emerged

The broadest definition of a political party is that it is an organization that seeks to attain and maintain political power, legitimately through elections or ignobly through other means.

These parties are not ruled by principles but by a materialistic outlook that makes them willingly adhere to a pecking order in which the one with the most power, money and other resources (including guns and people willing to use them) has the greatest say.

The more high-minded definitions require that the organization subscribe to an ideology, vision and policies and programs of action. With these additional prescriptions, a political party would be limited, in forming coalitions, to others of a similar ideological persuasion. The coalition partners must hold, at least in general, a similar vision and are proposing similar policies and programs for the national and the common good.

In the Philippines, where the use of the intellect, or at least the process of reasoning, has become quite rare among politicians, there are leading political parties that do have an ideological and policy framework.

They have a full-pledge constitution, statements of mission and vision, and a list of policies to adopt and programs to carry out. Some of these parties, however, have surrendered their principles for that quality called “winnability.”

As a result, parties that saw the beginning of our national life as a the American Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands, the Nacionalista and Liberal parties, both of which once upon a time stood for hopes, things and developments in our Republic that would promote the common good, today only do so on paper but not in practice—as seen in their mix of candidates and allies.

They exist only to win elections. And despite the solemn promises to rule the country according to their noble historical legacies, they will most likely rule according to the best counsels of Niccolo Machiavelli. For many of the biggest rats in the Arroyo administration and the House majority’s Lakas-Kampi CMD coalition have left what they perceive to be a sinking ship and have clambered aboard the barges of the Liberal and Nacionalista parties.

They, these defectors from Lakas, are most probably right. The old set-up of the Lakas-Kampi CMD, controlled by hugely unpopular leaders, will get a drabbing from voters in 2010.

These defectors are now in the Liberal and Nacionalista parties. Are they not poisoning the wells of the NP and LP?

With these politicians now in these two historical parties, have they not turned the NP and the LP into something not too different from the old Lakas-Kampi CMD in the hands of President Arroyo and her allies?

A new Lakas-Kampi CMD

Recently observed, is that there is a fresh Lakas-Kampi CMD. The party that is now looking like the underdog in surveys of the Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia has a brand new leadership. Its head is now Gilberto C. Teodoro. Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has left it to attend to her candidacy for congresswoman in Pampanga. And Mr. Teodoro is proving to be a sympathetic and credible figure.

Under Teodoro, suddenly, rays of intellection have shoot out of Lakas-Kampi CMD. Principles have become important. Virtues are on the lips of the party’s standard-bearer for president and they do not sound like tin cymbals but carry the pure sound of crystal—and golden temple bells.

The man speaking for the party—whose immediate act after the Maguindanao massacre was to expel the Ampatuan clan from his party and ask for their arrest—is a persuasive speaker and a sincere voice.

Appearing in forums and answering questions asked also of other presidential candidates, Teodoro does not speak as a candidate courting people’s votes. He answers questions to talk in concrete terms about what he would do about a problem and what principle leads him to take that program of action.

In his speech accepting his draft as Lakas-Kampi CMD’s presidential candidate, he outlined first the principles and values that the party under him would thenceforth be guided by. Then he spoke of actual work the party should do.

It was a speech by a presidential aspirant that has not been heard in this country for a very long time. –Manila Times