Why did Duterte call BBM a "weak leader?"

upporters of Bongbong Marcos are livid about the scathing pronouncement made by President Rodrigo Duterte that Bongbong “would be a very weak leader.”

For once I believe Duterte. A while back he also insinuated that this politician from a prominent political family was a cocaine addict, without specifically naming him. Again I believe Duterte on that. He should know.This vaunted “war on drugs” is his flagship program and he supposedly knows all the “big fish” in the drug trade, both on the supply and demand sides. After Duterte gave out that blindsided broadside many observed that it was the camp of Bongbong Marcos that went out the busiest denying it. If the shoe fits...

So why is Sara Duterte running as Bongbong’s vice-president?

It’s an admission that the Duterte brand has been ruined so bad it’s no longer capable of winning a national election by itself. So making Sara run for president would be a mistake.

The Marcos brand is no better. It has a stranglehold on a very small “KBL” loyalist basket of deplorables, to borrow Hillary Clinton’s term. They’re not too small as to be ignored, but not big enough to carry Bongbong on their own.

Politics is addition. If you add the Marcos vote with the Duterte vote, then perhaps the union can snag the presidency, especially if there is more than one opposition candidate.

If there is only one, the chemistry will still work if one or two credible “administration-turned-opposition” stalwarts are fielded. I call them “manufactured opposition” or “opportunity opposition” and to this category belongs Manny Pacquiao and Isko Moreno.

To me only Panfilo Lacson, because of his broad and eclectic support base, has the potential to be a “dark horse”--which also makes him the most potent swing vote all the way up the eve of the election, when he can still withdraw and endorse either Bongbong Marcos or Leni Robredo.

This is the reason why Leni Robredo ran as an independent. It allows her to build a rainbow coalition (no, not LGBT but certainly including them) and at the same removes any partyline impediments to accepting the endorsement of anyone from any party at anytime. No organizational recalibrating needed.

Back to the puzzle of the Bongbong-Sara tandem. The only possible thing that can go wrong for them would be split-voting. Unlike in the US elections where a vote for president carries the runningmate as well, here in the Philippines people can vote separately for the president and vice-president. So the father’s endorsement may be enough to carry the daughter to victory, but will not secure her upward mobility unless a Bongbong presidency is secured too.

So President Duterte’s message that Bongbong would be a weak leader is code for “make BOTH Sara and Bongbong win now, we can think about replacing Bongbong with Sara later.”

Bongbong’s followers must understand this but they also know they cannot win the presidency unless they help Sara win the vice-presidency. They need her votes to pad Bongbong’s votes.

Sara’s followers, on the other hand, understand that it’s useless to win the vice presidency if anyone who is a stronger leader than Bongbong wins the presidency. So they need to make Bongbong win because he would be the only president weak enough to fall in a Sara ascension.

But all of this is paper calculation. The mutual distrust in this uneasy alliance between Bongbong and Sara can trickle down to their followers. There is enough time and opportunity for both camps to realize that the success of one can only come with the demise of the other. So each one may still have a fallback strategy for milking the most support from the other as much as he can for as long as he can, and then going it alone in the last few yards of the sprint to the finish.

Right now, on the basis of the need for survival alone, my own calculation is that Bongbong would be better off trying win on his own and avoid incurring a political debt to the Duterte’s who WILL COLLECT on that debt as sure as the sun rises in the east.

I still think Duterte won in 2016 because Mar Roxas and the Liberal Party belittled him too much. They underestimated his ability to do political calculations that the LP's think-tanks, with their political doctorates, can not break down. They were wrong. Mar Roxas lost dismally but his vice president Leni Robredo won handily in the clearest-cut example yet of the result of split-voting. But, as they say, the rest is history as Leni STAYED vice-president, she had no ambitions to replace Duterte.

But Duterte never slept a single night soundly with the thought that his vice president is NOT from his party. I think that, if for no other reason, is mostly why Duterte ruled with an iron fist, perhaps more than even necessary. He is imprisoned by his calculation that it takes being a strong president to stay in power.

Which, of course, is universally true--as is its converse: a strong vice-president underneath a weak Bongbong presidency would de better than Leni did under the forceful presidency of Rodrigo Duterte.

Clearly, Duterte is a better learner of life's political lessons.

So no one should make the same mistake of underestimating him again.

Why do I talk like he's running for president? Well, he is--they just put his daughter's name on the ballot.