Coalitions between political parties are one of the mainstays of every election anywhere in the world. Driven by the logic that cooperation, sharing of resources, machinery and a meeting of minds ensures greater success at the polls, parties and candidates have always put a premium on forging coalitions and alliances with other parties and candidates.
However, it seems that the present 2010 election season is a bad year for coalitions. First to go down was the administration coalition borne of the mergers of Lakas-CMD and KAMPI parties that formed what was undeniably a mammoth organization back then. But what remains of what pundits have called the ‘Frankenstein coalition’ is nothing more than a shadow of what it was once, or more accurately what it could have been. All thanks to the defection of many of its key members and leaders to other parties in a move to save them from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s ‘kiss of death.’
Second is the Nacionalista and MAKABAYAN coalition of Presidential candidate Manny Villar and left-wing organizations led by Representatives Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza respectively, which was founded on an allegedly ‘mutual adoption’ of platforms that is still hit by criticism because up to now, the public has yet to see or read Villar’s or the NP’s platform that MAKABAYAN has supposedly also adopted.
The latest to fall apart was the coalition of Nacionalista and Nationalist People’s Coalition, the party of Villar’s running mate Loren Legarda, after it was declared as null and void by the Supreme Court for being the product of Comelec exceeded its jurisdiction when it accredited the coalition as the dominant minority party for the 2010 election, something still being eyed by main rival the Liberal Party.
In an election dominated by transactional politics, mired by weak political parties and infected by the presidential ‘bandwagon mentality,’ real and genuine alliances and coalitions of political parties working to form a more representative and inclusive government remains a pipe dream for Filipinos.
