Bailes politicos

I WANTED to title this piece “changing partners,” but very few will relate to, neither recall, that old song that my late mom used to play on our old “hi-fi” phonograph (that’s what they called the turntable then) when I was a child.

Googling the lyrics, so appropriate even for these times, we find “though we danced for one moment, and too soon we had to part…and I’ll keep on changing partners.”

So I used the Spanish “baile” which is also the Bisaya term for dance, which is what our politicians always do insofar as their politics is concerned.

The species used to be described as “political butterflies” at the time when we had two parties, the Nacionalista and Liberal, until Pres. Diosdado Macapagal, frustrated during the first half of his term by an opposition-controlled House, decided to install Capiz representative Cornelio Villareal as speaker by a mass turncoatism of Nacionalistas into his Liberal Party.

A year after, Liberal Party senator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. turned coat from his party and joined the Nacionalista Party through the sponsorship of the speaker Villareal through Macapagal deposed – Jose Bayani Laurel, and from there launched his successful presidential bid in 1965, thereafter ruling for more than 20 years.

Blame it on the constitutional aberration we have refused to change since its inception in 1987 --- a multi-party set-up within a presidential form of government.

Butterflies like honey bees just flit from one partner to another, every six years or even more often, but instead of mere turncoatism, they have found a new device: inventing new parties.

Maybe it’s akin to artificial intelligence --- just create what you find more convenient, and pretend until the next season for utilitarian change.

Time and time again I have derisively called out our political parties as nothing more than flags of convenience or vehicles for personal ambition or vested interest promotion.

And we just have to grin and bear these bailes politicos because we have to live with the flawed 1987 Constitution, because it seems that not in our lifetime will our leaders muster the political will to revise our political system

And it looks like even under a president with a sizable majority in last year’s elections, the first since we adopted the 1987 Constitution with its series of plurality-elected presidents, we will continue to be dazzled by the “bailes politicos,” the dance of the politicians.

But the species can be likened to “mirlitons,” which the great Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky immortalized in the Nutcracker Suite, the “Dance of the Mirlitons.”

Mirlitons are similar to our Spanish-inspired “barquillos,, thin sheets of cookie pastry rolled into a reed-like shape, hollow inside but temptingly crunchy and sweet, a perfect accompaniment to coffee or ice cream.

Ilonggo and Pampango pastry chefs have made versions where they fill the barquillos or mirlitons with chocolate, ube jam or polvoron, which our colonists called barquiron, which is similar to why our politicians change political parties, better described as “partners,” to fill their hollow selves with graces from above, either in projects or pork barrel.

Take the latest version: the Kilusan ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino, which is a take-off from the National Unity Party (NUP) and the defunct (?) KBL or Kilusang Bagong Lipunan of the late president Marcos Sr.. Our politicians have run out of creativity, as witness how our parties are all plays on trite name descriptions such as nationalist, democratic, unity, strength, and the now old-fashioned liberal, masa, progressive, and are there any others?

Former VP Leni Robredo even decided to junk her Liberal Party in 2021 without forming another party. She just changed colors from yellow to pink, her followers calling themselves “kakampink,” while detractors called them “pinklawan.”

Oh, of course! “federal” too, which became in