“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
--Franklin D. Roosevelt
By Alex P. Vidal
NEWARK, New Jersey -- When big names in Philippine local politics jump from one political party to another, it is normally greeted with derision and mockery from the deserters’ hitherto party mates and rivals.
They are tagged as “opportunists” and dismissed as “balimbings” (fruit with scientific name Averrhoa carambola) or turncoats.
Such was the misfortune that befell politicians in Iloilo City led by Rep. Jerry Trenas and Mayor Jose Espinosa III, who abandoned the Liberal Party (LP) for the administration’s Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) last year.
Political rivals took turns in lambasting “ingrate” Trenas , Espinosa and some of their ilk in the city council.
Their political enemies also utilized the social media to ridicule their move to leave LP and embrace President Rodrigo Duterte’s political party.
It’s always an earthshaking event for their detractors; the kind of opportunity to skin them alive in public their detractors would never allow to slip away. Politics 101.
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Not in Iloilo province.
When Governor Arthur “Art” Defensor Sr. disclosed last year that he, his son, Iloilo third district Rep. Arthur “Toto” Defensor Jr. , and 4,000 other local officials from their district will take their oath as the newest members of the PDP-Laban on January 18, 2018, nobody from the governor’s political rivals--or potential political enemies--raised a whimper.
Team Defensor’s scheduled “mass oath taking” would be administered by House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez at the Pototan Astrodome in Pototan town, 30 kilometers north from Iloilo City.
No admonition even from Iloilo fourth district Rep. Ferjenel “Dr. Ferj” G. Biron, Rep. Defensor’s rumored rival for governor in 2019.
Rep. Biron, who admits he has big respect and admiration for Gov. Defensor despite his loss in the 2013 gubernatorial race, probably didn’t want to sully the Defensors’ significant date with political history.
It would be awkward for the lawmaker from Barotac Nuevo to criticize the Defensors’ transfer from LP to PDP-Laban if he was eyeing LP’s official nomination for the top capitol post.
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Some provincial board members and municipal mayors who have remained loyal to LP also didn’t find it necessary to rebuke the Defensors’ decision to transfer even for the sake of “check and balance” and, to some extent, publicity.
They probably got Gov. Defensor’s message loud and clear: he needed the President’s blessings for Toto Defensor’s candidacy in 2019.
From the very beginning, the governor never hid his cards and was even excited to immediately lay them on the table without beating around the bush: he wanted the congressman son to be the administration’s standard-bearer in 2019.
Defensor would have been chided both by allies and detractors as hypocrite if he did not admit his decision to walk away from LP to PDP-Laban had something to do with political survival.
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