[Rappler’s Best] Marcos and the Arroyo ‘curse’

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'As we do our audits, analyses, and Monday-morning quarterbacking on the biggest midterm upset in nearly two decades, it bears noting that na-Arroyo si Marcos'

Who would have thought that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. would suffer the same midterm fate that former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo went through in 2007? It was Arroyo, after all, who helped Marcos win the presidency in 2022 through a backdoor maneuver that blindsided strongman Rodrigo Duterte, convinced his daughter Sara to slide to the vice presidency, and made her quit the political party that she had formed to join Arroyo’s Lakas-CMD.

As we do our audits, analyses, and Monday-morning quarterbacking on the biggest midterm upset in nearly two decades, it bears noting that na-Arroyo si Marcos.

Already president for six years then (she had served the unfinished term of ousted president Joseph Estrada), Arroyo formed her Team Unity senatorial slate in 2007 and got clobbered by the opposition, winning only three seats (the third one later snatched from her ally Migz Zubiri on account of Koko Pimentel’s electoral protest).

Arroyo’s ratings began their steep decline during that period. Like her, Marcos saw his ratings drop to their worst weeks, too, before the May 12 polls. The administration-backed Alyansa slate won only five seats (excluding Camille Villar, who eventually sided with the Dutertes and was endorsed by them). As Manolo Quezon III wrote in his Asia Sentinel newsletter, the “midterm massacre” was only the fourth time that an incumbent president was repudiated in midterms (and only the second time in the post-Marcos dictatorship).

This one is truly for the books, its twists and turns matching a Netflix blockbuster.

• Arroyo figured a lot in how the Uniteam alliance was formed for the 2022 elections that Marcos and Sara Duterte won. The road was somewhat paved in 2018 when the Arroyo-Sara Duterte-Imee Marcos troika led the ouster of then-speaker Pantaleon Alvarez.
• The man who facilitated Sara’s entry into Lakas-CMD, and eventually managed her vice presidential campaign, was Arroyo’s fair-haired boy when she was president: Speaker Martin Romualdez. When he became Speaker in 2019, Romualdez heaped praises on his mentor Arroyo for “making me become what I am today.”
• Yet, it was Romualdez who moved against Arroyo’s other protégé, Sara Duterte, prompting Arroyo to side with her. This caused friction between mentor and mentee in 2023, with Romualdez demoting Arroyo to deputy speaker after she was implicated in moves to oust him as speaker. Arroyo flatly denied it. The feud, however, made Sara quit Lakas-CMD.
• Last year, when Sara refused to take her oath during a House probe into fund misuse allegations against her, guess who came to her rescue? Arroyo.
• What are the ties that bind Sara and Arroyo? Bea Cupin tells us all about it.

The Marcos-Arroyo dynamic is in truly strange territory. Neither the President nor the former president, in fact, attended the administration slate’s sortie in Pampanga. Lian Buan tackles the Central Luzon vote in this story.

With Arroyo winning her congressional reelection bid — unopposed — in these elections, I wonder what role she will play in this new post-midterms world order, so to speak. Because her once favorite young congressman seems to be in trouble again, as Dwight de Leon reports.

Here are some of Rappler’s bests that you shouldn’t miss:

• Thought Leader Joey Salgado says President Marcos must be dreaming if he thinks he can focus on “nation building” after the elections, because, with the looming impeachment trial of the Vice President, politics will eat up most of his time.
• Isagani de Castro Jr. looks into the campaign messages that worked — from “Mr. Malasakit” to “Libreng Kolehiyo.”
• Rappler tackles the powerful mix between big business and politics in this four-part series on the country’s billionaires and their political alliances. 
• Jairo Bolledo explains a recent Court of Appeals decision against party-list Representative-elect Leila de Lima. 
• JC Gotinga and Andrei Rosario track the victory of the unknown Paul Senogat, who beat beauty queen Shamcey Supsup in the race for a council seat in Pasig City.
• Delfin Dioquino writes about the “Ilocano Shark,” the man behind the Palarong Pambansa logo.

– Rappler.com

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