The Philippines, it is often said, has mediocre or weak political parties and an inchoate or ill-developed political party system. A political party, as defined by the country's Omnibus Election Code, is an organized group of persons pursuing the same ideology, political ideas, or platform of government. Political activist and analyst Joel Rocamora quips, however, that nobody can accuse any of the Philippines’ main parties of being such an animal. Dominated by the country's politico-economic elite, they are built around personalities, rather than around political programmes or platforms. In fact, ideologies and platforms are just adornments for them. A major Philippine daily newspaper aptly describes what the parties stand for: “The usual motherhood statements are passed off as political programmes”. Apart from being indistinguishable from one another in their political beliefs and programmes — or lack of these — the Philippines’ main parties have weak membership bases and seem to come alive only during election time. Elections are often marked — or marred — by lavish spending, vote-buying, fraud, and violence. In Philippine party politics, turncoatism is a venerable tradition — politicians flit like butterflies from one party to another. Post-Marcos parties, in particular, are said to reflect the undeveloped or malformed character of the Philippine political party system. Far from being stable organizations, they have proven to be nebulous entities that can be set up, merged with others, split, resurrected, regurgitated, reconstituted, renamed, repackaged, recycled, or flushed down the toilet any time. Most politicians belonging to the main parties have come to be derogatorily called trapo, which is short for “traditional politician”, but ordinarily means an old rag used for wiping off dust and dirt that often becomes grimy or greasy.

A scrutiny of Philippine trapo parties leads one to question certain prevailing notions about political parties and about the relationship of political parties and party systems with political development and democratic consolidation.