#PHVote: Hold your horses!

Manage your newsletters with ease by visiting rappler.com/newsletters.

My social media feed abounds in the opinion of users who are so elated by the fall of dynasties in certain areas, the rise of leaders deemed liberal and competent. They attribute these to various factors, among them: that the youth voters came in droves and chose well, and that it was the so-called pink wave of Leni Robredo’s 2022 campaign that carried the principled candidates.

And then there are posts, obviously thought out after the euphoria had died down, telling the same thrilled people to hold their horses. We may have such outcomes to toast now because individual camps tapped into the right voter sentiments while doing the good old ground work and disciplined campaigning.

Indeed, there are stories of triumph worth celebrating — I’ve shared some of them in the #PHVote newsletters the past days. But there are also stories that can sober us up about the tremendous amount of work left to be done for our politics to be truly progressive.

There’s the party list, for example. Akbayan may have topped the race, poised to get the maximum three seats allowed by law, thus sending human rights lawyer Chel Diokno to Congress.

Yet look at the four organizations that follow the frontrunner in the race: Duterte Youth, Tingog, 4Ps, ACT-CIS. Theirs are nominees that have used the party-list system as a backdoor in establishing or expanding dynasties.

Before the campaign started, we republished the research by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, showing how political dynasties were also swarming party-list elections. Shortly before the elections, our senior researcher Jodesz Gavilan went over the 156 party-list groups and provided us in detail how similar family names were shaping the race.

At the local level, one dynasty falls, only to be replaced by another dynasty. Cases in point:

Ortegas beat Ortegas in La Union’s gubernatorial, congressional races
In clash of cousins, Miraflores defeats Haresco in Aklan’s 2nd District
Mujiv Hataman beats nephew in Basilan gubernatorial race
In the senatorial race, outgoing Makati mayor Abby Binay lost, despite figuring in the winning circle in pre-election surveys. Her husband Luis Campos, who used her name in campaign posters in a bid to succeed her as mayor, also lost. But it’s really just one branch of a tree. The new mayor is Nancy Binay, the fifth in the family to occupy the post.
In Albay, former governor and longtime congressman Joey Salceda’s bid to return to the capitol was frustrated by another former governor, Noel Rosal, whose clan held the mayoralty post of Legazpi City for 25 years until this year.
In the town of Rizal in Cagayan, there’s the interesting story of a 21-year-old daughter, Jamila Ruma, who won as mayor after she substituted for her father who was gunned down while campaigning. The other side of the story is that the vice mayor is her mother — 2025 would be the sixth election when her parents switched positions.
In Davao del Norte, former House speaker and outgoing 1st District congressman Pantaleon Alvarez lost his vice gubernatorial bid to Clarice Jubahib. Well, she’s not any other opponent, but the daughter of the incumbent governor.

I can cite more examples, and I’m sure there will be more interesting analyses in the coming days as our team takes a deep dive into the election results and related data.

But the message here, really, is that: Yes, it’s a long way to go for transformative politics, but the first steps — the many first steps, from different starting points — have been taken. We will get there.