So the Liberal Party reportedly “now ‘listens’ to the people it once ignored”. This admission raises an important question: What served as input into their vision and governance platform to begin with?
Surely, in a democracy, political parties are guided by their constituents’ priorities. But how could the LP have known what these priorities were if they had not been listening all the while?
The answers to this question are all no-brainers. The LP being no more than the election winning machine of the “prayerful” lot of the Aquino-Cojuangco clan really found no need to listen to anyone because they had only three sources of input into its agenda:
(1) the fate of Hacienda Luisita;
(2) the mythology of Ninoy’s and Cory’s “martyrdom”; and,
(3) the wishes of the Roman Catholic Church and its henchmen in the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
Are the LP now truly willing to “connect to a wider spectrum of Filipino voters” as its leader Kiko Pangilinan promises? Of course they are. There’s an election they desperately need to win. After that? Well it wouldn’t be a surprise if the focus of their agenda reverts back to beholdenness to the strategic objectives of those three pillars of their real platform.
That’s the Liberal Party for you — full of promises during election season and nothing else but hidden agendas in between.