“If these once powerful parties continue to exist today, they are merely shells and can be revived in the future only if and when the party’s candidate wins the plum prize, the presidency.

Partido Demokratiko Pilipino (PDP), the ruling political party of President Duterte, appears to be in shambles, following the coup that ousted Pantaleon Alvarez from the speakership and installed Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives.

PDP has splintered into factions, with one claiming its rightful leadership while the other engaged in grabbing the party’s leadership, coup style.

But it is not just the political party that is in shambles at this time, following the House coup. It is also the House with its new leaderships that appear to be in shambles as squabbles continue among the party members on committee chairmanships, especially the minority leadership issue and the party itself.

Duterte is reportedly going to step into the political fray bugging the PDP under which he ran for the presidency.

How then can Duterte come up with a Solomonic decision when both warring factions’ leaderships are fairly weak?

Then too, even if Duterte directs the factions to unite and chooses one faction over the other, what guarantee does the President of his ruling party have that one favored faction will have the support and cooperation of the other faction?

There is too the probable breakup of the party or its position of political strength as some congressmen have aired the idea of their moving out of PDP to join presidential daughter Mayor Sara Duterte’s regional party which, really at this time, does not make any political sense, since the regional party is focused more on Mindanao — more specifically the Davao areas which would be of big help to add votes coming from these regional areas. However, not all members of Congress need that regional party support since their concentration is on district votes. Why then would the faction of PDP members want to join the party of the presidential daughter?

The answer may lie on what was stated by Mayor Sara, who reportedly said she and her party are open to parties that want to form a coalition with her party.

This has led many to speculate that Sara is eyeing the expansion of her regional party to become a national political party, which will slowly but surely, bring to near extinction of PDP, when it becomes sooner or later just a shell of a party and probably dead after 2022.

Also being speculated by most is the rise of Sara as the next probable speaker in the 18th Congress, should she run for a seat in the House of Representatives in 2019, which means she gives up her mayoral post and runs for a seat in the House, which would be a sure win as all she needs is to win with a district vote.

Once in Congress, she can easily make a bid for the speakership and win—and as long as her father stays as President, Sara stays as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

But as long as the country sticks to the current form and unitary system of government with a President at the top of the rung, not just the fractious PDP and Sara’s political party will survive with a new President, since the way politics is played in this country—political parties wise—their political strengths depend on who wins the presidency.

“There are serious doubts that federalism will change the face of Philippine politics.

Proof of this is the fact that past political parties that became the ruling parties once upon a political time are now virtually extinct political parties. And if these once powerful parties continue to exist today, they are merely shells and can be revived in the future only if and when the party’s candidate wins the plum prize, the presidency.

Would a shift to federalism bring about a change in Philippine politics, parties and their members?

There are serious doubts that federalism will change the face of Philippine politics. Under a pure federal parliamentary system following the western parliamentary democracy, ours would remain the same, with politicians jumping ship and pledging allegiance to the party in power and forming yet another supermajority and sweetheart minority deals.

Even a worse outcome of such a system is that whoever becomes the prime minister under a unicameral parliament, following the Asian model, the prime minister stays as minister almost forever.

The late strongman, Ferdinand Marcos, during his dictatorship under martial law rule, ushered in the presidential-parliamentary system, where he ruled as President-Prime Minister, after which he gave up this dual role and appointed a prime minister, even as Marcos kept all power, including legislative power that was shared with the National Assembly, or what passed for the Philippine parliament.

This country has experienced almost all types of government systems, whether a presidential democracy to martial rule and a dictatorship, the French presidential-parliamentary system, three coups, including the recent Speakership coup, and now a federal system being bandied about.

None of these systems worked for Filipinos—but may work if our politicians start looking after the interest of the nation instead of their selfish political interests.

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