Impeachment push blamed for poor Alyansa showing

The administration Alyansa Para sa Bagong Pilipinas’ poor showing in the recently concluded elections, where only half of its candidates won a Senate seat, was the fault of those who instigated the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte.

Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, the Alyansa campaign manager, said Duterte’s impeachment caused Alyansa to lose a great number of votes in Mindanao — the Duterte family’s stronghold — after pre-election surveys last year, before she was impeached, showed the administration’s candidates were a shoo-in for election.

“We know what happened in Mindanao. This all started when the impeachment was filed. Before the elections, we commissioned a survey in November, December, and we tracked Mindanao,” Tiangco said in an interview on Thursday. “The loss of the Alyansa senatorial candidates was self-inflicted. It should not have happened.”

The lawmaker made the remarks amid what he described as a blame game after the elections, where allies of the administration began “blaming” him for the unexpected loss of half of Alyansa’s senatorial candidates.

He asserted that those who aggressively pushed for the impeachment of Duterte, despite knowing full well it wouldn’t be tackled in the Senate during the election campaign period, had no one to blame but themselves.

However, administration ally, House Deputy Speaker David “Jayjay” Suarez did not subscribe to Tiangco’s insinuation, pointing out that 86 percent of the House members who signed the impeachment complaint won their reelection bids.

“While I do respect the opinion of Toby Tiangco with regard to the matter, I do not subscribe to it. But of course, as a campaign manager, he probably sees the terrain. He understands it better,” Suarez told reporters in an interview on Friday.

Of the 40 Mindanaoan lawmakers who signed the impeachment complaint against Duterte, 26 won reelection to the House, representing 65 percent. Overall, Suarez said, 85 percent of the entire House membership retained their seats in Congress.

“First of all, if we look at the winning rate of the congressmen who signed the impeachment complaint, I believe it was 86 percent. So if anyone should be feeling the impact, if there was any, it should have been them,” he said.

Of the 10-member Alyansa senatorial slate, only Erwin Tulfo, Panfilo Lacson, Vicente Sotto III, Pia Cayetano and Lito Lapid won a seat.

Camille Villar, who skipped multiple Alyansa sorties during the campaign and whose family-owned PrimeWater distribution company was ordered investigated by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. over customer complaints, switched her loyalty to the “DuterTen” slate of the Duterte family. She won a Senate seat under the opposition banner.

To recall, Villar was endorsed by Vice President Duterte a month after former president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on a warrant from the International Criminal Court, a move that was highly criticized by the Villar family — a key ally of the Dutertes.

According to Tiangco, although many local officials in Mindanao supported Alyansa, they were reluctant to openly express this for fear of alienating or losing votes from Duterte loyalists, whose numbers remain significant throughout the region.