NATIONALLY ELECTED, the Senate was deliberately designed to foster presidential ambition. As the only set of officials with the same electorate — a national one — as the president, senators aspired for election to a chamber that would be the penultimate step to the presidency itself.

The Upper House has 24 senators with six-year terms, elected on a staggered basis of eight every three years. Its members are elected both during presidential election years, and midterms.

Thus, from 1941 to 1971, the only midterm polls were senatorial elections. And because their results had proven to be so clearly indicative of an administration’s standing (or lack thereof), senatorial elections have become a referendum on the sitting administration.

The nature of the electorate also meant that each Senate has been expected to be a counterfoil to an unpopular president or to end up in the pocket of a popular one. This is where the midterms came in: the midterm served as the initial salvo in an incumbent president’s efforts either to secure reelection (under the 1935 Constitution) or to anoint his or her successor (under the present charter). When President Arroyo was able to run for reelection, the old dynamics — involving as the elections did, enough veterans of the premartial law era for them to operate instinctively, and comfortably, under such a situation — ensured a continuation of the old expectations that a vote for the administration slate was a vote of confidence in the sitting president. (See Table 2)

Table 2. Elections for the Senate of the Philippines Includes national elections: 1941, 1946-1973, 1987-present + Bloc voting in place Presidential election years in bold Midterm elections underlined
YEAR	ADMINISTRATION	OPPOSITION
1941+	24 NP	0
1946+	8 LP	7 NP 1 Independent
1947+	7 LP	1 NP
1949+	8 LP	0
1951	0	8 NP
1953	3 LP	5 NP
1955	8 NP	0
1957	6 NP	2 LP
1959	5 NP	2 LP 1 Independent
1961	2 NP	6 LP
1963	4 LP	4 NP
1965	2 LP	5 NP 1 Independent
1967	7 NP	1 LP
1969	7 NP	1 LP
1971	2 NP	6 LP
1987	22 Lakas ng Bayan Coalition	2 Grand Alliance for Democracy
1992	2 Lakas	16 LDP 5 NPC 1 LP-PDP-Laban
1995	10 Lakas	2 PRP 1 NPC
2001	8 PPC	5 PnM
2004	7 K-4 Coalition	5 KNP
2007	2 TU	8 GO 2 Independents

So ingrained is this approach to senatorial elections that the administration itself couldn’t resist the urge to put up a fight, one in which it invested a significant amount of resources. It may even have ended up believing its own propaganda. Why else would it have spent 2005 to 2007 pooh-poohing the senate as an institution, only to invest time and effort into putting up a slate and then thundering that slate would win — because of “machinery” and “command votes”?

THE NATURE of the two contests — a House no administration ever loses, a Senate that is won or lost depending on the standing of the administration with the people — was, and remains, obvious enough to political observers, even those who only looked as far back as the Marcos years for examples to validate the distinction between the two.

Still, the administration believed that with the vast majority of House and local races being contested by members of its coalition, local leaders would have the luxury of time and enough logistics to deliver the vote, in turn, to the administration senatorial slate. But the members of its two main factions, Lakas and Kampi, were themselves pitted against each other, and shortly before the elections the rivalry between the two had become so intense that last-ditch efforts had to be made to calm things down. A visibly anxious Speaker Jose de Venecia of Lakas had to shepherd his loyalists to the Palace, where an uneasy, public truce between his party and the President’s own Kampi, was brokered.

And yet the damage had been done — and continued to be done — both by means of Kampi’s pirating erstwhile Lakas members, and the president proving either unwilling or incapable of marshaling one of the greatest powers of her office: refereeing intramurals within the ruling coalition to keep the partnership whole and direct its energies to keeping the opposition at bay.

No less than 58 congressional races ended up as Kampi vs. Lakas fights. These contests, incidentally, took place in extremely “vote-rich” provinces ranging from Batangas, to Bulacan (four districts), to Pangasinan, (two districts in that province), to Cebu (four districts in that province alone) and Iloilo, and even in what would become controversial areas like Lanao del Sur.

The intramurals, we should recall, took place at a time when local candidates still had the liberty to devote their energies to helping national candidates. After the local races began in earnest in February, time and attention for national candidates was scarce, as has always been the case. Bad blood between both Lakas and Kampi, and local candidates competing for the attention and support of their national patrons, not all of whom could be attended to (either because the party leader, in the case of Lakas, was facing the fight of his political life, or the president, in the case of Kampi, was distracted by her husband’s hospitalization) and who therefore had to fend for themselves.

This would have been bad enough on its own, even if the popular mood was not anti-administration. Local leaders have highly sensitive political antennae, and they would have known just how their local constituents were inclined to vote in terms of the Senate. It generally makes little practical sense for local candidates eager to maintain their networks of supporters and committed votes, to dissipate local goodwill for the sake of national candidates. It makes no sense at all to do so, if local leaders know their constituents are inclined to vote for the other side.

But it also makes no sense for local leaders — and that includes candidates for the House — to inform the source of their patronage, the Palace, of the feelings of people on the ground. It would simply tempt the Palace to divert its resources to a more obliging candidate. And so local candidates took Palace resources, promising, of course, to deliver, but carefully avoided the temptation to use up their own political capital giving instructions that would be ignored anyway.