Of the expected 62 or 63 million registered voters come 2022, expect a little over 50 million to actually cast their votes for our new president and other elective officials down to the local government levels. With around 56% of these voters living in disaster and COVID19 devastated areas, expect some dramatic political events that are sure to disrupt our lives for the next six years.

This early, political pundits are now playing up with several names as the successor for Duterte. Duterte, if we believe the things his presidential spokesperson Harry Roque is saying all these time, is on his way out, and it really looks it. He just asked his bosom friend, former priest and now political kingmaker Jun Evasco back in Malacanan. Evasco’s comeback is a sign that the aging politician is preparing his exit. That foolish yarn calling for a Duterte-Duterte tandem is just one of the stupidest things ever heard by any rational minded Filipino for the past four and a half years.

With Duterte on his way out, it does not prevent him from endorsing names for his successor and for the expansion of his political allies. Duterte knows that he got the goat from many people, and it is not just in politics that he messed up–he will now go down in history as the President who single-mindedly maneuvered for the economy to tank to its lowest pits since Martial law and World War Two. Duterte, for sure, is unmindful of this all because in his feeble mind, he thinks that he did the country a whole lot of service when in reality, his people are starving and local business is suffering.

I’LL RESERVE my comments on those who want to get Duterte’s blessing for the presidency come 2022. What I’ll discuss here is about the chances of those who will run for the Senate come 2022.

At first glance, the Senatorial campaign seems a squeaker. Eight senators are expected to toss their hat for re-election and by latest count, the same number of combackers are sure to battle it out for the empty twelve slots.

Ask any conventional thinking political pundit out there and you’ll get the analysis that outliers may have a hard time getting themselves in at the winning circle. Looking at those names who want nothing but a slot in a post-Duterte era, they seem to be formidable political brandnames already with pretty good past electoral victories and results.

What analysts fail to account is what happened in the 2019 elections. Three outliers managed to squeeze themselves in the winning 12 with two of them getting their names at the first six. These are Tolentino, Go and Bato, former Duterte political appointees who used their sinecures as platforms for election at the Senate.

What they had then was the support of many political parties that gravitated to the Duterte camp in 2016. These parties include the Nationalistas, the Nationalist People’s Coalition or NPC and even Binay’s UNA. PDP-Laban managed to elect most of their bets in both national and local elections because there is still three years left to go for this administration.

Now, it is only barely a year and a half. And many things already happened, and in particular, the Speakership row that saw Alan Peter Cayetano getting his ass kicked and in a most brutal and humiliating fashion from young political upstarts like Velasco.

Cayetano is no push over. As a spice boy, Cayetano sacrificed his personal ties with the Estradas in order to push his own agenda. During the time of the Arroyos, Cayetanos sided with the Magdalos in an eerie political honeymoon that was more for show than anything. What is evident is beyond the political veneer lies the truth that Cayetano is an astute politician that is young yet molded in the fine lines of traditional political kingmakers like the De Venecias, Zamoras and the Punos.

That’s why, expect a backlash coming from Cayetano’s side for sure. The only thing that remains unanswered is–will Cayetano fight out the forces close to Duterte? If this happens, will we see the rise of another political force with Cayetano and his Nacionalistas together with other oppositionist forces? Cayetano knows that if he wants the presidency, the only slot left for him is the slot of the progressive forces, and that includes the Liberal Party. Robredo knows that she does not have a Chinaman’s chance of defeating the administration bet. The only way to defeat, says, a Sarah Duterte led administration party is for a new face to arrive and blast their way towards sure victory come 2022.

Going back– we all know that a senatorial bet has to have the right and expansive network, funds and a superb electoral strategy to win a spot. We know that Go, for example, won on the strength of Cayetano’s electoral machinery, coupled with several others. A senatorial bet who does not have such a machinery, well, may expect defeat because the senatorial elections is a more tightly fought electoral exercise than, say the presidential. Well established political brandnames took the entire length of their years of service as Senators before they were able to crack the code for victory at the polls.

This just means that although the 2019 elections saw outliers getting themselves in the winning circle, it is not the case for 2022. For sure, the administration party will be much weaker and much vulnerable to raiding than before, and they will find the political environment too different for their liking come elections day.