“All Politics is Local” and Regional

“All Politics is local”, said former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill.

Let me add “regional” the way it is currently played.

As a very interested observant and student of politics in the United

States and the Philippines I was lucky to have actively participated

in presidential and local elections in both countries.

In the United States, the presidential winner seems to be determined

by the results of certain “Swing or Battleground” States like Florida,

Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and a couple of others.

In the U.S. 2012 presidential elections, I correctly predicted the

results with the help of well known statistician Nate Silver’s formula. In

the Philippine presidential elections where my own Law classmate Rod

Duterte was a candidate, I also correctly predicted the victory of

both Duterte as President, and Leni Robredo as Vice President.

Noticeable in the 2016 Philippine presidential elections are the

sources of the votes. Mindanao gave Duterte landslide votes. His

closest opponent Roxas, not surprisingly, was the winner in most of the

major Visayan provinces.

The battle for the Vice Presidency between Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.

(Bongbong) and Leni Robredo is more interesting to note.  While Leni

Robredo won, the results were close. Bongbong obtained about 80% or

more of the votes in the Ilocos Region. The latter is known in local

politics as Solid North. In fact, the region produced several Ilocano

presidents since the Philippines became a Republic: Elpidio Quirino,

Ramon Magsaysay, Marcos, Sr., and Fidel Ramos. Although Carlos P.

Garcia is known to have hailed from Bohol, he is considered a

Full-Blooded Ilocano (FBI) because both of his parents are from Abra.

The Ilocano votes of Bongbong Marcos were matched by the Bicolano

votes plus more that Leni Robredo obtained from the Bicol provinces. She

also obtained about 80% or more of the votes in the area. VP

candidates Senators Escudero and Honasan also hail from the

region.There has never been a winning presidential or vice

presidential candidate from Bicol.

While all politics is local and therefore territorial, it is also

ideological in the United States. One must either be a conservative or a

progressive.

This is not so in the Philippines. Major parties are not distinguished

along ideological lines.

I am an Ilocano. That is why a friend was surprised when he found out

during Martial Law that I was an avid critic of Marcos. I explained to

him that being an Ilocano does not necessarily mean pro-any Ilocano

or pro-Marcos. I went on to explain how the battle was drawn using the

political spectrum analysis during Martial Law.

On the extreme left, I said, was Jose Ma. Sison, an Ilocano UP

professor who founded the Kabataang Makabayan (KM), led the Communist

Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army.

The Christian Left was led by Ilocano rebel priest Fr. Conrad Balweg ,

a Catholic priest who began his revolutionary career defending the

ancestral land rights of the Tinggians, of Abra Province in the

Cordillera Mountains of Northern Luzon, against government-backed

mining operations. Abandoned by the Church and hunted by the

government, he went underground and joined the Communist Party of the

Philippines/New People's Army. He is the Philippines’ Fr. Camilo

Torres who espoused the Theology of Liberation and a comrade of Latin

America’s Che Guevara.

Left of Center were Raul S. Manglapus and Sonny Alvarez of the

Movement for a Free Philippines (MFP), President and Secretary

General, respectively. The former was an Ex-Senator and Foreign

Affairs Secretary who hailed from Tagudin, Ilocos Sur while the latter

was a Delegate to the Constitutional Convention who came from

Santiago, Isabela.

Of course, on the extreme right was dictator/fascist Ferdinand Marcos

and his Ilocano generals led by his Chief of Staff Ilocano Fabian Ver.

Based on this analysis, I have shown that not all Ilocanos were so bad

that they blindly and solidly supported a dictator who actually robbed

them blind – of their civil rights and their bright future.