POLITICS of convenience has always been the overriding principle in the candidacy of aspirants for any elective position. Hence, the rule of thumb is to run under the aegis and tutelage of a political party.

Any candidate, whether for a local or national post, immediately look for machinery through which he or she could mount an effective campaign. Thus, it’s unthinkable for one to resign from a political party.

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The ideal situation for a candidate is to ally himself with a political group to assure organizational support in the campaign. But that setup deprives the same candidate of the freedom to make independent decisions.

He has to toe the party line. It is what the aspirant will have to give up in exchange for party support, which is both financial and organizational, meaning money and machinery.

This was Sen. Chiz Escudero’s dilemma early this week when he opted to be his own man in his presidential aspiration by resigning from his party. He chose between maintaining his free spirit as a politician or subsuming it under his political party, which imposes certain conditions on his decisions in exchange for funds to fuel his campaign.

This is the reality of our democratic political party system.

But there is a basic rationale behind this: support for a political platform.

In the United States, the two-party system has withstood the buffeting of political change across the decades. The Democrats and the Republicans continue to fight each other for the support of the American voters.

The fact that the American electorate has alternately placed them in power is proof of their maturity, voting for the party that promotes a platform that helps solve the problems confronting their country.

Right now, with the multi-party system in the Philippines, many presidential aspirants have surfaced, some of them without clear political party support. It is still debatable whether this is good or bad for us.

But the philosophy behind the adoption of the multi-party system, which is to open the opportunity for one to aspire for any elective position without any organized party support, has been attained.

The point is that, unlike in the US or the United Kingdom where the two-party system is at work, an independent candidate cannot hope to win, except with luck.

In the Philippines, Escudero may win the elections with the support of small organizations of local candidates and voters who share the same political philosophy and platform of government.