EXCLUSIVE: Hontiveros, not Sara Duterte, is the face of the opposition—Drilon
Sen. Risa Hontiveros should be “recognized as the leader of the opposition,” as she leads the coalition of parties opposed to the Marcoses and the Dutertes, former Senate president Franklin Drilon said.
“(Hontiveros) has been consistent in opposing the policies of the Marcos administration and the Duterte group,” Drilon said in an exclusive interview with Inquirer Mobile.
Her opposition to the two powerful political families is grounded in their “erroneous policies and corruption,” according to Drilon, who served thrice as Senate chief.
“She represents in the Senate the coalition of parties not allied with the Marcoses or Dutertes. She is the face of opposition in the Senate, not (Vice President) Sara (Duterte),” Drilon emphatically declared.
Drilon asserted that Hontiveros would make a good presidential candidate in 2028.
In 2022, Hontiveros, who belongs to the Akbayan party-list group, successfully ran for reelection under the ticket of Vice President Leni Robredo and former Sen. Francis Pangilinan. Both Robredo and Pangilinan lost to the Marcos-Duterte tandem. A member of the Liberal Party (LP) since 2003, Drilon has previously led the party as president, chairman, and vice chairman.
Collapse of ‘UniTeam’
It was a different story with Sara Duterte, Drilon said, as the vice president became part of the political opposition because of her rift with President Marcos. She would have looked the other way on Mr. Marcos’ controversial policies had she remained in the administration.
“Sara became an oppositionist because of her rift with the Marcos administration. Otherwise, it would still be convenient to maintain the ‘Unity’ ticket,” said Drilon, referring to the “UniTeam” ticket that brought victory to the Marcos-Duterte tandem in the 2022 election.
In June of this year, Duterte became a leading opposition figure against the Marcos administration when the alliance collapsed dramatically with her resignation as education secretary.
But the situation between Mr. Marcos and Ms. Duterte is “funny,” according to Drilon.
“(P)resident Marcos and Vice President Duterte ran together under the Unity ticket. Today, what do we have? We have an administration by Marcos and we have an opposition by Duterte,” he said.
“Can you imagine today the opposition is (represented by) Duterte?” Drilon asked. “The opposition today reflects the situation that the political party system (in the country) is a joke. There is no political party system here.”
Drilon attributed the country’s lack of a political party system to the legacy of the martial law years under the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the father of Mr. Marcos. Marcos Sr. ruled the country for two decades until he was ousted during the Edsa People Power Revolution in 1986.
While Drilon said the LP could assert itself as the opposition party under the Marcos administration, the party has been unable to do so since it failed to gain key political seats in 2022.
“That’s the sad reality that we have in our country today insofar as our political system is concerned,” he lamented.
Despite the presence of multiple parties in the country that serve as vehicles for politicians to seek elective positions, they do not constitute a party system, he said.
For Drilon, a “political party system is critical to the survival of democracy in any society where you have institutional groups, parties (that) would stand for certain programs, (but) is totally absent today” because personalities have become the “principal focus of being elected to positions” in the country.
Administration critics
While lawyer Harry Roque declared Duterte as the new opposition leader following her resignation from the Marcos Cabinet, Drilon said that she and her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, did assume the role as “critics of the administration.”
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But he scoffed at the way the Dutertes would raise issues against the administration.
“When they were in power, they were doing exactly the same thing,” Drilon said of the complaints raised against Mr. Marcos by the once powerful political clan of the Dutertes.
Drilon mentioned Duterte’s condemnation of the alleged police abuses during the search for Pastor Apollo Quiboloy at his Kingdom of God compound in Davao City a few weeks ago.
“How can you talk about the human rights of Quiboloy when you go back to how human rights were treated as a joke in the time of Duterte,” said Drilon, adding:
“When they talk about abuses in police operations—memories are short—(with) the kind of police operations we saw against hapless drug suspects (during the Duterte presidency).”
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Drilon was referring to the brutal drug war pursued by the Duterte administration that has claimed thousands of lives, for which the former president is being investigated by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity.
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