Judging by her lavish spending even before the official start of the campaign period, along with reelectionist Sen. Imee Marcos, Las Pinas Rep. Camille Villar is apparently using the billions amassed by her family to win a Senate seat that her mother, Sen. Cynthia A. Villar, is vacating. Judging by her legislative record, it would be a disaster for her to inherit that seat.
To be honest with her, she simply doesn’t have it, and no amount of embellishment would change her image as simply aloof, like all others born with a silver spoon, and she spoken a sentence or two to champion whatever advocacy she has in mind. She can pass herself off as the advocate of market vendors (as the Villars once had a market stall), or the defender of abused women, children and those who survived medical emergencies and prolonged therapy. Or even as protector of ice plant workers, inasmuch as there are a number of ice plant owners and operators of cold storage facilities surnamed Genuino. All we see are ads that purport her as hobnobbing with the poor, with bottles of alcohol unseen. What voters should very well remember was that Camille Villar was one of 70 lawmakers who heeded the call of the Duterte administration to scrub the legislative franchise of ABS-CBN on July 20, 2020. Such glorious accomplishment for the business interest of the Villars.
One Villar in the Senate should be enough but the Villar father, mother and perhaps some holy ghost believe that Mark of the committee on silence deserve company to dance the tango. Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said that people should choose Heaven for the climate and Hell for the company? The record of Manny Villar, as in seeking government loans to prop up his property empire, changing the plans for expressways to pass through his land, as well as the reported unequal joint ventures characterized by the original landowners selling condos and suites to have themselves paid, or securing arable and irrigated land for commercial centers in the Visayas to the discomfiture of agrarian reform farmers, will haunt Camille’s campaign.
Why is Camille running in the first place? To remind the Filipino people that she voted to junk the ABS-CBN legislative franchise to please the unlamented president Rodrigo Duterte, along with the forgotten Mike Defensor, now a wealthy businessman engaged in quarrying, a trade that he learned as environment secretary during the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo dispensation? Or that the Villar suddenly got a piece of the frequencies that ABS-CBN enjoyed for decades? Surely, not a bad quid pro quo. The Villars must be enjoying the company of accused child molester Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, who also got a piece of ABS-CBN frequencies while doubling as the appointed son of god and spiritual adviser of Duterte.
The Villars must have realized that Camille would benefit from name-recall, considering that her mother had aligned herself with both the Dutertes and the Marcoses, although she had clashed consistently with farmers who have condemned her talking about “ignorant peasants” who have to be schooled by the Department of Agriculture (DA) since they cannot understand science. This is the same Villar who thought that agriculture has suffered immensely from reduced soil fertility and not because of land conversions, the criminal neglect of the farming sector and wrong policies like Rice Liberalization Law (RLL) that Cynthia Villar had championed and legitimized unbridled food importations.
Moreover, there ius an outside chance that spending a billion pesos or so would increase the chance of the Villar unica hija to enter the “Magic 12.” In the February 2025 SWS survey of voter preferences for the May 2025 midterm elections, Camille is still out of the winning column along with Imee Marcos, showing that big spenders are not guaranteed an expensive ticket to the Senate. If the survey were to be believed, Erwin Tulfo of the Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas (ABP) is the top banana at 45%, followed by Senator Bong Go of PDP-Laban with a largely questionable 38%. Senator Lito Lapid was third with 36%, his “Leon Guerrero” movie character apparently not erased by brain fog in the collective consciousness. Comebacking ex-Senate President Tito Sotto and cursing independent aspirant Ben Tulfo tied in fourth to fifth place with 34%, Senator Bong Revilla crawled to climbed to sixth and seventh place with 33%. POGO Law author Senator Pia Cayetano is actually tied with Revilla while former senator Panfilo Lacson is a tad lower at 32%, while former senator Manny Pacquiao, Makati City Mayor Abby Binay and TV host Willie Revillame are locked in a trilateral battle at 30%.
The initial figures are not reassuring for both Camille Villar and Imee Marcos, who should be benefiting from their popularity, even notoriety, inasmuch as their propagandists believe that positive and negative publicity are two sides of the same coin and guarantee that their principals are still in the collective consciousness of voters. There are nagging issues that will continue to hobble Camille, including claims that Villar employees are not being treated well and that some have not getting their salaries (the unkind cut is that they receive gift certificates rather than cold cash.) Camille studied at the Ateneo de Manila University and took a business course in Spain. She was chief operating officer (COO) of the Brittany Corp. and managing director of Vista Land. She and once dabbled with emceeing along with Revillame but their program bombed. Elected deputy speaker at the Lower House in 2020, she rejected the post but accepted it after being reelected in 2022.
Camille did not vote to pass the POGO Law but she has remained fantastically silent on the issue of the Chinese squatting at the Scarborough Shoal and harassing Filipino fishermen, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) and the Philippine Air Force (PAF) within the country’s maritime boundaries and the extended economic zone (EEZ.) Nothing by way of a comment was heard from the gallant lawmaker when Chinese fictionists perorqate again that Palawan is part of China, the way Xi Jinping bragged that the Han Chinese were the original inhabitants of Okinawa. She is expected to be an assiduous legislator, not a phony bleeding heart from Mindanao, but the record is clear: She has been weighed and found wanting. So, voters should stop electing the moneyed, the incompetent and those who protect their own vested interests under the guise of crafting laws. Their overworked staffers do the humdrum toil for them. Sometimes, they even share the lectern with their bosses. Principles being what they are, prepare to cross out Camille’s name. Voters, beware! (DIEGO MORRA)
