EP 23: Liberal Party eyes comeback, coalition in 2022

Not long ago, the Liberal Party was the ruling party, attracting politicians from different directions, during the presidency of Benigno Aquino III. 

The “Yellow fever” was back  though not as popular as it was shortly after the 1986 EDSA Revolution.

But as we know, alliances can be fickle shifting as conveniently as they are formed in our fractured political system here in the Philippines. 

So when Aquino’s candidate lost in the 2010 presidential election, the Liberal Party lost many of its members as well to the new ruling the PDP-LABAN party of Rodrigo Duterte.

It didn’t help that Duterte relentlessly attacked the Liberal Party criticizing its supposed hypocrisy and failures to deliver on its own promises during the Aquino regime. 

After five years and with Duterte now under scrutiny for his own failures — and abuses — the liberal party is trying to pick up the pieces in preparation for next year’s elections. 

The party is now in talks with at least four senators as part of efforts to form, what its party president described, as the “broadest unity possible.”

But judging from its crushing defeat in the 2019 midterm elections, the Liberal Party still has a lot of work — hard work — to do to regain its level of relevance in Philippine politics.