Senate musical chairs, anyone?

If there were to be only four Senate seats vacated come 2028 owing to term-limited or retiring incumbents, any senatorial wannabe must think a hundred-fold before throwing their hat in the ring.

Politically, there are those who make “lightning appearances” to refresh or embellish the public’s memory of their relevance. Those who, from out of the blue, now appear too conscious of their “newfound niche” belong to another species of political wannabe; their motives, while clear, are suspect. They do what they do for the single ulterior motive of being recognized in a zero-sum game that is Philippine politics.

What if another Gatchalian replaces Win or another Zubiri replaces a retiring Juan Miguel? Parenthetically, what if another Akbayan bet replaces Risa and the older religious icon replaces Joel?

Likewise, there are eight reelection-eligibles whose terms expire in 2028. However, it’s quite unthinkable that Raffy, Alan Peter, JV, Chiz, Jinggoy, Loren, Robin, Mark, Migz will not seek a second term as constitutionally allowed. They have been senators for the longest time and getting reelected, to them, is like renewing a driver’s license, easy-peasy. The so-called “equity of the incumbent” is as strongly ever on their side since they would have generated a “captive vote” over time.

Against this backdrop, there’s a high possibility that all “lucky 8” will be reelected, thereby leaving only four slots up for grabs. But again, if all those four term-limited names would field another member of their family, of their partylist, or of their religious cult, will there really be such slots for the taking?

In case those aspiring to become senators might just be hallucinating, it’s high time they are awakened from a rather astonishing dream. Note that in the winning chart in the 2025 senatorial list, only Erwin Tulfo and Rodante Marcoleta were the first-timers.

What chance, if any, will first-timers have so far as the 2028 Senate composition is concerned? There are former senators already standing at the dance floor who, as soon as a new musical number is played, the first opportunity to dance is all theirs.

Do you remotely remember who these might be? Don’t we have a Dick, Frank, Nikki, Gringo, Sonny, Grace, Francis, Nancy, Cynthia, Koko, where all these 10 winnables will compete for only four slots? Just who will grab a seat when the music stops, so to speak?

Those probably extraordinarily confident to win Senate slots in 2028, given this overall political configuration might have entertained the belief that the electorate wants all seats vacated and first timers to be voted in instead. If this were anybody’s ball game, then practically every aspiring individual might be so tempted to file a certificate of candidacy, especially those who have already manifested their fight against corruption with periodic interviews or appearances in quad media platforms. But, how well has public awareness really seeped in for them to be chosen from a presumably longer list of senatorial aspirants?

It becomes both an existential challenge in the realm of statistics as it is in probability, where in the former, it can always land in faulty conclusions and in the latter as akin to a coin being tossed, it can have a half-chance of landing on heads or a one-sixth chance on a four in a six-sided die.

So, for names that entirely escape the population’s threshold of “memory recall,” the journey from “impossibility” to “certainty” is nebulous. There are those who would otherwise bank on either the statistical or probability realm, if not both, that the electorate has become too intelligent to be making questionable choices.

Still, no sad curse is present in “incumbents, dynasts, celebrities” and those who embrace the belief counter-intuitive to this statecraft are bound to lose or be pushed into the edge of a rude awakening. “Muscle memory” remains the voters’ default mode.