Self-inflicted

It is important to listen to what Toby Tiangco is telling us. He has the ultimate insider’s view of the dynamics explaining the administration’s midterms debacle. For a politician, he is unusually candid.

The debacle that met pro-administration senatorial candidates, in Tiangco’s view, was largely self-inflicted. The turning point in the last electoral contest, he says, happened last February. This was when, after sitting on three versions of the impeachment complaint against Sara Duterte, the leadership of the House of Representatives suddenly produced a fourth version that is not substantially different from the ones earlier filed.

On the last day of sessions, the majority of congressmen lined up to sign the fourth version – obviously without the material time to read and study the document. The signed impeachment complaint was rushed for filing at the Senate, getting there just minutes before the close of business hours.

From that point on, the pro-administration candidates went downhill. Before the impeachment complaint was filed, nine pro-administration candidates were comfortably in the win column in Mindanao. After that event, only four were struggling above water among Mindanao voters.

Mindanao holds nearly a quarter of total voters. The voters in the island suddenly found themselves with a cause to fight for. Most of them voted solidly for the pro-Duterte slate. The same trend happened among voters in the Visayas.

By Tiangco’s account, the pro-administration ticket did not even bother to hold rallies in Mindanao. The strong emotional response to the impeachment of Sara could not be turned back. Local candidates could not openly endorse the pro-administration ticket without courting a backlash from their own voters.

In Cebu, with such hubris, Governor Gwen Garcia dared to endorse the pro-Marcos Alyansa slate. That spelled the end of her decades-long political dominance.

The House leadership’s decision to move ahead with the impeachment of the Vice President is a story in itself. It is a story of folly and greed.

Tiangco thinks it was a useless move. Even if they signed the impeachment complaint early February, the trial could not be held until June. If the intention was to discredit Sara to undermine her political endorsement of candidates, the opposite happened. Sara became a rallying figure for the multitudes of voters already disenchanted with the way the Marcos administration had run the country.

There is, says Tiangco, a more insidious play behind the impeachment timetable. President BBM, he says, was extremely dissatisfied the way legislators mangled the 2025 national budget to give them more discretionary funds at the expense of priority national projects.

The major realignment of national funds caused the DPWH budget to exceed the budget for education. The Constitution mandates education should always enjoy budgetary priority. Blame our corrupt congressmen for a fifth of our high school graduates remaining functionally illiterate.

With no time to return the budget bill, BBM’s only recourse was to embargo much of the congressional insertions. Involved here are hundreds of district-level projects that congressmen expected to profit from in time for the campaign period.

The House leadership cynically used the impeachment of Sara as a means to force President BBM to release the frozen pork barrel funds. President BBM refused to be held hostage to this cynical congressional play. Consequently, the congressmen did not carry the pro-administration slate.

From reliable accounts, we are told that the Palace, late in the campaign, tried to save the day by shifting funds to the provincial governors – traditionally the local rivals of the congressmen. The move was hardly effective. The funds were most likely pocketed or used to fight local battles.

Greed is a major factor explaining the Alyansa’s debacle.

Spokesmen for Speaker Martin Romualdez tried to downplay Tiangco’s account by pointing to the large number of pro-impeachment congressmen who won their local contests. That is a silly diversion.

With or without the impeachment, those congressmen would win anyway. Many of them, including Romualdez, were running effectively unopposed. Most of them represented entrenched dynasties. It would take nothing short of a nuclear war to dislodge them.

On top of it all, the pro-administration candidates’ campaigns were fueled by all sorts of cash transfer programs using funds that otherwise might have been used to educate the next generation or build the infrastructure the country so direly needs.

Tiangco says the congressmen usurped the President’s political capital to move funds to support their own campaigns – or simply to enrich themselves. Over the past three years, the biggest administrative problem at the House of Representatives was building parking space for the supercars the congressmen loved to flaunt.

They may be skilled at commandeering taxpayer money, but the congressmen are also notoriously disloyal. They notoriously shift political affiliations with every change of administration – simply for the funds of it.

Recall how many times in the past few years the House of Representatives ejected the chamber’s leaders without much ceremony. After the stink of the mangled 2025 national budget leaked out, the once powerful chair of the appropriations committee was removed.

Now there is talk that Martin Romualdez might be ejected. Not only did his leadership fail to pry the embargoed funds, the chamber must now pursue an unpopular impeachment process that could produce yet another debacle injuring the House’s reputation even more.

His henchmen have corralled enough signatures supporting Romualdez’s claim to the speakership. We know how unreliable those signatures are.