Gloria Arroyo's plan in 2010

Monday, November 30, 2009

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has confirmed that she will run for a congressional seat in the second district of her home province in Pampanga. A lot of people are wondering why would a sitting President want to slide down from the highest elective post in the land to be a Congressperson. It’s a shame!

Well, she’ll do it for her political survival. She knows that the main opposition candidate, Liberal Party’s presidential bet Noynoy Aquino, will almost certainly win in next year’s election. She knows that her supposedly anointed candidate, Gibo Teodoro, would have NO chance of winning. That’s why she allowed the disintegration of her PaLaKa party and even turned over party leadership to Gibo in a guise of reforming the party.

The truth is she’s allowing the dismantling of PaLaKa to strengthen the other political party she is secretly supporting—the NP/C (Villar’s NP and Legarda’s NPC). She’s just hoping that those who’d bolt out of PaLaKa will go to NP/C and not Noynoy’s LP.

She knows that the political battle in the national level is between the LP and NP/C, with Erap’s PMP eventually aligning with the LP after the elections and whatever left of PaLaKa forming a coalition with NP/C.

She’s now seeing the most likely scenario as:

Noynoy wins the Presidential election next year but he’ll have an unfriendly Congress. Both Senate and House of Representatives will have more NP, NPC, and PaLaKa members than LP and PMP combined. Manny Villar, who’d end up the runner-up in the presidential elections, will form a coalition with PaLaKa (and even some members of PMP) to create a formidable opposition to the LP administration.

So the Senate will be headed by opposition senator (maybe Santiago or Cayetano?) while the House of Representatives will be headed by Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo!

Nice move huh!

Very clever, indeed!