The “Partido Pilipinas” of Senators Grace Poe and Francis Escudero is a political gimmick and does not represent a definite set of principles, according to Sen. Sergio Osmeña III.
Poe and Escudero, who do not belong to any political party, said the Philippines was their party and its members are the Filipinos, as they announced their team up for the 2016 elections.
According to them, they were running under an “ideology and principle” they called “Partido Pilipinas.”
Osmeña said a party should be based on principles and ideology. But Poe and Escudero had a lot of motherhood statements in their speeches, and it was something that he could write in one hour.
“So what else is new? So they say, we’re now a party of the Filipino people, that’s a gimmick. It doesn’t stand for any set of political principles, not like in America or Europe,” Osmeña told reporters late Thursday.
But Osmeña, a known political strategist, also said that having a political party is not actually that important in Philippine politics anyway.
It’s the parties that flock to the candidates, who form a group or coalition to support their campaign based on the various personalities approaching them for a team-up, he said.
No candidate, if offered assistance from groups outside his own, would refuse, he noted.
“It’s the presidential candidate that organizes the party and not vice versa,” he said.
Officials who belong to existing parties more often than not transfer to the group of the most popular candidate, he pointed out.
“I’ve never believed in the ability of any political party to deliver, and it’s been proven,” he added.
Even the Liberal Party of President Aquino had various partners who joined him only in 2010, and it could not be said to have secured his victory on its own, he said.
Osmeña also agrees that running independent presents advantages for candidates, including having less baggage.
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