Lakas-Kampi to formally merge next week

MANILA, Philippines – Administration parties Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats and Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (Kampi) will formally merge on May 28 to create the biggest political party in the country.

Raymundo Roquero, Lakas-CMD executive director, said the merger agreement will be signed on the final day of a 45-day period set by President Arroyo when she designated political affairs secretary Gabriel Claudio as chairman of the National Commission on Unification which hammered out the terms of the final agreement.

The merged parties will henceforth be called Lakas Kampi CMD, Roquero said.

“We have the largest political party,” Roquero said. “Lakas and Kampi have agreed to unite on the basic principle that political parties should have an ideology, offer a program of government and reject personality politics as the basis for seeking public office.”

He said the merged party consolidates the President’s major supporters and gives her a “very strong political hand.”

Roquero said the merger proves that Mrs. Arroyo’s political allies are determined to win the 2010 presidential elections and continue her successful program of government that has produced record growth for the economy, capped by 28 quarters of unbroken growth.

The merged party retains the Christian-Muslim democratic ideology and the principle of people empowerment that came with the founding of Lakas National Union of Christian Democrats in 1992 under the leadership of President Fidel Ramos.

He said from Kampi were incorporated among other things the major principles for new governance and social justice that the President initiated as Kampi’s founding leader.

He said the leaders of both parties finalized all major agreements on the new party’s Constitution and by-laws and leadership structure after intense negotiations.

The merger talks began at the local level, launched in Davao City and Baguio, but were met with little success. Mrs. Arroyo was forced to intervene to speed up the process and gave the Lakas and Kampi negotiators 45 days to forge an agreement.

Roquero said the local merger talks were abandoned in favor of talks from top to bottom. This was made possible by the resignations in April of Speaker Prospero Nograles as Lakas president and Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Villafuerte as Kampi president.

Roquero said the merged party now wields major political clout unseen in the Philippines in the post-EDSA Revolution period.

“The new party combines the political muscle of Lakas and Kampi that propelled President Arroyo to victory over her opposition rival in the May 2004 elections,” he said.

Lakas has 39 governors while Kampi has 17 governors, giving the new party control over 56 of the country’s 80 provinces.

Lakas and Kampi control six Bicol provinces (Region V) and three of the four Central Visayas provinces (Region VII), including vote-rich Cebu, which gave the President more than 1.185 million votes for an overwhelming margin of 1.004 million votes over rival Fernando Poe Jr. in the 2004 elections.

“Lakas-Kampi is even more dominant in the entire Mindanao island having a stranglehold in all of Caraga’s five provinces and in Region XI’s four provinces. It is in control in four of the five ARMM provinces, three of four provinces in Region XII and also three of four provinces in Region X,” Roquero said.

He said Lakas has 91 congressmen and Kampi 54, giving them a solid majority in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, the merged party has four senators.

Roquero said Lakas has 59 city mayors and 694 municipal mayors, while Kampi has 26 city mayors and 418 municipal mayors or 85 city mayors and 1,112 municipal mayors.

The merged party has political control over 71 percent of the country’s 120 cities and 73.8 percent of the 1,500 municipalities.

Lakas will have more leverage in picking administration candidates in 2010 after the party’s merger with Kampi, based on calculations made by abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak.

Based on the “equity of the incumbent” policy adopted by the committee on merger, more current members of Lakas will be given the merged party’s nomination for local positions.

The sitting Lakas or Kampi governors, congressmen, and mayors – unless they are on their last term – become the automatic standard-bearers of the new party.

This means that current Kampi members who challenged and lost to Lakas candidates in the last elections have no chance of being named official candidates of the new party.

In past elections, too, there were instances when Lakas, being the bigger party, had its way with coalition allies and extended the equity to immediate relatives of last-term party members.

Lakas’s membership remains bigger than Kampi’s.

“If you are the incumbent governor and you are Lakas, and you ran against Kampi in the last elections, you will be the official candidate [of the merged party]” in 2010, Lakas spokesman Prospero Pichay told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak.

Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barzaga Jr., a Kampi member, thinks the arrangement is only fair. “It operates both way,” he said.