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Winning an election involves strategic thinking, thorough planning and budgeting, and flawless implementation. And of course, with a competent campaign manager orchestrating the entire campaign strategy.
Many people attribute the stunning loss of many of the administration’s bets in the last elections to the impending impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte and the supposed incarceration of her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte at the hands of International Criminal Court (ICC).
This has ignited a flurry of social media discussions about the seeming invincibility of the Duterte faction and a slow and costly downspin of the allure of the Marcos bloc led by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. himself.
What I find disconcerting is that there appears to be a concerted efforts to demean the merits of the impeachment of VP Sara and the Duterte’s case at the ICC. Playing the numbers game, political handlers of the Dutertes are hyping the much maligned “the people have spoken” mantra. Impressionable voters – mostly avid Duterte fans from the South — are now forming a worrisome narrative that father and daughter are innocent of the charges brought against them. Are we reminded of the angry crowd who chose the robber and murderer Barabbas over Jesus Christ when Pontius Pilate asked them whom they want crucified?
The election loss of the administration’s bets, from my Vantage Point, shouldn’t be seen from the optics of the impeachment and the ICC cases. Winning an election involves strategic thinking, thorough planning and budgeting, and flawless implementation. And of course, with a competent campaign manager orchestrating the entire campaign strategy. The manager should ensure that it aligns with the candidate’s or the party’s goals and resonates with the target audience.
Does the Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas (Alliance for a New Philippines) — the electoral alliance formed by President Marcos Jr.’s allies from the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas (PFP), Lakas-CMD, National Unity Party(NUP), Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), and the Nacionalista Party (NP) to field candidates for the 2025 Philippine general election — have these success factors?
The impeachment factor
Consider these:
- Only five of its 11-member (initially 12) senatorial slate won in the elections — Erwin Tulfo, Ping Lacson, Tito Sotto, Pia Cayetano, and Lito Lapid; the other six bets lost miserably — Bong Revilla, Abby Binay, Benhur Abalos, Manny Pacquiao, and Francis Tolentino.
- Two senatorial candidates, Camille Villar and Imee Marcos, originally belonged to the Alyansa coalition, but they shifted loyalty to the Davao City faction led by VP Sara Duterte, who is now the bitter political enemy of the President. How they switched to the Duterte camp is a development that Alyansa campaign manager, Navotas Representative Tobias “Toby” Tiangco should have foreseen and prepared for.
- Anti-administration senatorial bets won five of the six top senatorial slots, while only a single Alyansa candidate, Erwin Tulfo, got into the upper half of the winners’ circle. Bong Go topped the senatorial elections, Bato dela Rosa landed third, and Rodante Marcoleta emerged sixth. They all belonged to the “Duter10” slate, which former president Rodrigo Duterte formed shortly before he was arrested on March 10. Duterte remains in prison at the ICC facility in Scheveningen, The Hague, the Netherlands, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity committed during his violent anti-drug war from 2016 to 2022.
But in the same breath:
An overwhelming majority of congressmen who supported the impeachment of VP Sara won in the 2025 elections.
- Out of 115 reelectionist lawmakers who signed the fourth impeachment complaint, 87% (or 100 out of 115) have been reelected. These include Manila representatives Joel Chua (who led the House committee investigation on VP Sara’s misuse of public funds) and Rolando Valeriano (who delivered the privilege speech which triggered the investigation). VP Sara had joined local political sorties in Metro Manila to actively but unsuccessfully campaign against both Chua and Valeriano.
- In Mindanao, 36 out of 44 reelectionist lawmakers who signed the Duterte impeachment complaint have also won, including Davao del Sur Lone District Representative John Tracy Cagas, who was the only district representative from the Davao Region to sign the impeachment complaint.
- Akbayan, whose congressional representative Perci Cendana endorsed the first impeachment complaint on December 2, 2024, emerged as the surprise front-runner in the 2025 party-list election with more than 2.7 million votes. Leila de Lima, who served as the spokesperson for the complainants of the first Impeachment complaint and is a staunch foe of Rodrigo Duterte, also won a seat in the House of Representatives as the first nominee of ML (Mamamayang Liberal) Party-list.
- Of the three party-lists that endorsed the second impeachment complaint, Kabataan and the ACT Teachers clinched House seats, while the third — Gabriela — nearly made it at 55th place or just a notch below the last spot. Gabriela, however, may still have a chance if the Commission on Elections favors the disqualification of party-list winners Duterte Youth or Bagong Henerasyon (BH) whose proclamation had been put on hold pending the resolution of their cases.
So what went wrong?
Political analysts point their fingers to Tiangco, whom they view as having thrown his colleagues under the bus. According to them, this was all because of Tiangco’s burning ambition to be the chairman of the powerful House appropriation committee, after learning that his chances of getting the House speakership was nil. They point to an ANC interview where Tiangco single-handedly claimed to have blocked the release of congressional funds.
Frankly, I don’t get it. Tiangco is not a part of the executive branch and, even assuming that his move was greenlit by the President, such is undue delegation of executive powers to a lawmaker or, conversely, usurpation of executive authority over fund disbursements. Both could be grounds for graft.
The withholding of funds has deprived constituents of much-needed projects for development and job creation. Never mind that congressmen couldn’t use the district funds as bragging rights for reelection. What matters is that the people were the ultimate victims of his act.
Was Tiongco incompetent to hold the campaign or team together?
Tiangco’s critics say that Alyansa was made to look weak when it was unable to do anything to stop two candidates — Imee Marcos and Camille Villar — from publicly humiliating and undermining the alliance through their political ads on VP Sara’s endorsement of their candidacies and repeated absences in major Alyansa sorties.
Villar repeatedly snubbed Alyansa’s campaign sorties from March 11 (when former President Duterte was arrested) to April 4, as well as the penultimate miting de avance held on May 9. Marcos publicly refused to attend Alyansa sorties after Duterte’s arrest. Meanwhile, no clear message or position against the two “misbehaving” senatorial candidates was issued by the Alyansa campaign team headed by Tiangco.
His critics are perplexed as to why Tiangco does not even know how to run a national campaign or maximize local government unit support for national candidates. The Alyansa campaign was not only disorganized, it was lackadaisical. There were only 21 sorties scheduled throughout the campaign period that ultimately ended in one Alyansa campaign sortie per week in the last two months of the campaign period. Because he had no idea how to maximize LGU support for campaign sorties of Alyansa, Tiangco relied solely on Marcos Jr.’s support for the sorties (which is why all sorties were scheduled based on the President’s availability), and left the Alyansa candidates to fend for themselves in seeking local endorsements and securing LGU support.
Although the congressional and local posts had conflicting candidates belonging to the political parties that composed the Alyansa coalition, Tiangco was supposed to ease the tension arising from the conflict. Tiangco was supposed to be the lion tamer within the coalition composed of political parties like the President’s PFP; Speaker Martin Romualdez’s Lakas-CMD; NUP; and the NPC which was founded by the late businessman Danding Cojuangco.
A case in point was Special Assistant to the President Antonio Lagdameo causing trouble in the BARMM. As attested by Sultan Kudarat Gov Pax Mangudadatu, Lagdameo allegedly disregarded the equity of the incumbent of Lakas candidates. So what happened was instead of the Lakas candidates campaigning for Alyansa, they went on their own to survive, given the formidable opposition from Lagdameo’s PFP allies.
Tiangco was also said to have surrendered the Mindanao votes thinking that Alyansa was too weak to stand a chance to win in the region. His “brilliant strategy” was to leave Mindanao alone and concentrate on other regions where he believes Alyansa has a strong following. Alyansa just lost Mindanao by default.
The ties that bind
The President personally selected Tiangco, citing their personal friendship since their youthful days. The congressman is his relative by affinity, being the husband of his cousin, Michelle Romualdez-Yap. Tiangco previously served as the campaign manager of former vice president Jojo Binay in his unsuccessful 2016 presidential bid.
Tiangco was reported to have a war chest of P20 billion for the Alyansa candidates. The amount was supposed to be used mainly in the political campaign of the senatorial candidates, who had to pursue a nationwide campaign, and congressional candidates, including those belonging to party-list groups, and even candidates running for local posts. It is not exactly known how Tiangco managed the Alyansa’s campaign funds. Tiangco has yet to issue an explanation or a statement of campaign contributions and expenses as of posting time.
Critics also raised the issue of Tiangco’s incompetence and inefficiency to handle the coalition’s entire campaign machinery, which proved too big and complicated for his abilities to muster. He simply lacks strategic thinking, communication, fundraising, leadership, and flexibility, they said.
What could be regarded as a fatal mistake was his failure to anticipate and discern the reported intrusion of China into the midterm elections. Bong Go, Bato dela Rosa, and Rodante Marcoleta, who are notorious for their links to and sympathy for China, are among the winning senatorial candidates.
Go won with more than 27 million votes, or slightly 6 million votes more than his nearest rivals, Aquino and Dela Rosa. With the audit of senatorial votes still to begin, there are no official statistical or actuarial studies on Go’s plurality.
Marcoleta’s political victory was another issue of concern. Although he was the Iglesia Ni Cristo bet, Marcoleta would not have won with just the INC members’ votes because of lack of sufficient numbers. He had to rely on a political strategy that could be described as creative, but not necessarily, ethical and morally correct. He enticed conflicting and, ergo, rival candidates for congressional and local posts to support him in exchange for support of the INC members, especially in political constituencies and areas where INC support was considered crucial.
Whatever the results of this midterm elections, the Filipino public should not be blindsided. VP Sara’s claim of victory should not extinguish the alleged malfeasance she committed while in office and the thousands of drug-related deaths that her father was alleged to have orchestrated. Both should be held accountable. – Rappler.com
Val A. Villanueva is a veteran business journalist. He was a former business editor of the Philippine Star and the Gokongwei-owned Manila Times. For comments, suggestions email him at mvala.v@gmail.com.
