Hugpong ng Pagbabago

Also known as: HNP · Alliance for Change · Hugpong

Definition

Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP; “Alliance for Change”) is a regional political party based in the Davao Region of the Philippines, formally launched on February 23, 2018, by then-Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte — the Vice President whose record this wiki’s entry on her documents — together with the governors of the region’s four provinces, in support of the administration of her father, President Rodrigo Duterte. (Wikipedia, PNA) The founding roster installed Sara Duterte as chairperson, Davao Occidental governor Claude Bautista as president, Davao Oriental governor Nelson Dayanghirang as vice president, Davao del Norte governor Anthony del Rosario as secretary-general, and Compostela Valley governor Jayvee Tyron Uy as treasurer; the Commission on Elections granted the party its accreditation as a regional political party in July 2018. (PNA)

HNP’s lineage runs through the Duterte family’s local machine — Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod, the Davao City party founded by Rodrigo Duterte and registered with the COMELEC on March 28, 2011, whose recognized regional successor it is — and its record divides into three phases: the 2019 midterms, in which the HNP-led administration alliance took nine of the thirteen Senate seats it contested; the 2022 UniTeam campaign, which Sara Duterte fought under a borrowed national banner after resigning from HNP on November 11, 2021; and the post-rupture contraction, in which the family’s 2025 candidacies ran under the revived local party while HNP itself, by its chairwoman’s own account in September 2025, retained only two members. (Wikipedia — Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod, Wikipedia, PNA, Manila Bulletin)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	Hugpong ng Pagbabago	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugpong_ng_Pagbabago
Wikidata	Hugpong ng Pagbabago (Q55614046)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q55614046
DBpedia	Hugpong_ng_Pagbabago	https://dbpedia.org/page/Hugpong_ng_Pagbabago
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A	N/A
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	Hugpong ng Pagbabago HNP Sara Duterte regional political party Davao 2019 midterm coalition UniTeam 2022 COMELEC	N/A
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

HNP
Alliance for Change
Hugpong

Examples and Analogies

A regional machine built to punch nationally: HNP functioned like a distribution network that signed national brands — in 2019 it carried a thirteen-name Senate slate for parties far bigger than itself, delivering the Davao Region wholesale while its partners supplied the national machinery. (Wikipedia)
A party as a family holding: the record fits the succession-vehicle pattern — the father’s local party scaled up regionally by the daughter, lent out when a national banner served better, then returned to as the family’s mark of identity; by September 2025 the chairwoman described HNP as herself and one board member — less a roster than a nameplate. (Wikipedia — Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod, Manila Bulletin)
Verified organizational data:
Launch: February 23, 2018, by Sara Duterte and the four Davao Region governors; founding officers — chairperson Sara Duterte, president Claude Bautista (Davao Occidental), vice president Nelson Dayanghirang (Davao Oriental), secretary-general Anthony del Rosario (Davao del Norte), treasurer Jayvee Tyron Uy (Compostela Valley) (PNA)
Registration: COMELEC accreditation as a regional political party granted July 2018; a later proposal to convert HNP into a national party was publicly forsworn by its chairwoman in 2025 (PNA, Manila Bulletin)
2019 midterms: administration alliance with PDP–Laban, the Nacionalista Party, Lakas–CMD, PMP, the NPC, LDP, the NUP, and the People’s Reform Party; first rally February 12, 2019 in San Fernando, Pampanga; a thirteen-candidate Senate slate of which nine won; in the Davao Region House contests, 652,318 votes (1.61 percent) for three of eleven seats (Wikipedia)
2022: Sara Duterte resigned from HNP on November 11, 2021, two days after dropping her Davao City reelection bid, and ran for the vice presidency under Lakas–CMD; HNP sat in the UniTeam alliance behind the winning Marcos–Duterte tandem; Davao Region House contests: 1,223,815 votes (2.54 percent), six of eleven seats (PNA, Wikipedia)
Officers as publicly recorded: chairwoman Sara Duterte; president Claude Bautista; secretary-general Anthony del Rosario; treasurer Jayvee Tyron Uy; national affiliation carried in the party’s record as PDP since 2019 (Wikipedia)
Current status (September 2025 on): membership placed at two by the chairwoman’s own account; the party’s public record lists two of the Davao Region’s eleven House seats and fifty of its one hundred provincial council seats; colors blue, red, and green (Manila Bulletin, Wikipedia)

Usage Scenarios

1. Analyzing the 2019 Midterm Coalition

Electoral researchers use HNP as the organizing case of the 2019 administration coalition — the multi-party slate it led, the nine Senate seats the alliance won, President Duterte’s own withholding of endorsement from two of its candidates, and the Otso Diretso opposition it crushed. (Wikipedia)

2. Studying Regional Party Strategy

HNP is the modern reference point for the regional party as a deliberate scale of organization — registered with the COMELEC as regional, anchored on one family’s home region, and used to aggregate provincial officials behind a national program rather than to contest national office in its own name. (PNA, Wikipedia)

3. Following the Duterte Network After the UniTeam

Analysts of the Marcos–Duterte rupture trace the network through its party vehicles — Sara Duterte’s exit from HNP for Lakas–CMD in 2021 and from that party’s chairmanship in May 2023, the record this wiki’s entries on Sara Duterte and Lakas–CMD carry — and back to HNP as her remaining party home. (PNA, Manila Bulletin)

Strategies

Build the region before borrowing the nation: HNP consolidated the Davao Region first and rented national machinery when needed — the 2021 resignation to Lakas–CMD being the documented swap of banners, not of machines, and the 2019 Senate sweep (nine of thirteen) the proof of delivery that made it a sought-after partner. (PNA, Wikipedia)
Keep the local counterpart alive: the family retained Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod for city contests and revived it in 2024 — the two-party architecture that let the network contest 2025 locally even as the regional party emptied. (Wikipedia — Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod)
For researchers: quote the certified figures — 652,318 votes (1.61 percent) and three seats in 2019; 1,223,815 votes (2.54 percent) and six seats in 2022 — and date every membership or officer claim, since the party’s contracted state post-2023 makes undated rosters misleading. (Wikipedia, Manila Bulletin)

Security and Safety Measures

Registration integrity: HNP’s legal personality rests on its July 2018 COMELEC accreditation as a regional party; claims to act for HNP are tested against the commission’s record and the party’s publicly stated officers, as the corpus’s other party entries practice. (PNA, Wikipedia)
Name confusion: Hugpong ng Pagbabago (the regional party) and Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod (the Davao City local party) are distinct registered organizations whose records are frequently merged in press accounts; each fact should be attributed to the correct banner. (Wikipedia — Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod)
Current-status discipline: as a living party whose chairwoman faces the ongoing Senate impeachment trial recorded in this wiki’s entry on Sara Duterte, HNP facts belong in the documented current-status register — dated, attributed, and without anticipation of any verdict. (Manila Bulletin)
For researchers: the party’s contraction — from a four-governor founding to a self-described membership of two — is itself the datum; rosters copied from the founding or coalition years should not be presented as the present state. (PNA, Manila Bulletin)

Historical Context

HNP was launched on February 23, 2018, in the Davao Region, when Sara Duterte and the four provincial governors — Bautista, Dayanghirang, del Rosario, and Uy — formalized a regional “alliance of change” in support of the Rodrigo Duterte administration, installing the founding officer roster that PNA recorded. The COMELEC accredited the party as a regional political party in July 2018, and through late 2018 and 2019 it assembled the administration’s midterm coalition — PDP–Laban, the Nacionalistas, Lakas–CMD, PMP, the NPC, LDP, the NUP, and the People’s Reform Party — holding its first rally at San Fernando, Pampanga on February 12, 2019 and fielding a thirteen-name Senate slate. (PNA, Wikipedia)

The 2019 result was the coalition’s high-water mark: nine of the thirteen HNP slate’s candidates won Senate seats, President Duterte endorsed the slate’s candidates save two, and the Otso Diretso opposition won none; in the Davao Region’s House contests HNP took three of eleven seats. The national turn followed: after dropping her Davao City reelection bid, Sara Duterte resigned from HNP on November 11, 2021 — her handwritten letter, sent the morning of that Thursday, spoke of resigning “with profound sadness” — accepted the Lakas–CMD banner for the vice presidency, and won with 32,208,417 votes as HNP sat inside the UniTeam alliance behind the Marcos–Duterte tandem, the campaign this wiki’s entry on the 2022 presidential election records; the party’s Davao Region House contingent rose to six seats. (Wikipedia, PNA)

The rupture years emptied the regional party even as its chairwoman kept the name. The break between the UniTeam partners drove the 2023–2026 proceedings this wiki’s Sara Duterte entry documents; the family’s 2025 Davao City candidacies ran under the revived Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod while Rodrigo Duterte won the mayoralty from ICC detention; and on September 18, 2025 the Vice President affirmed that she remains with Hugpong — “only one companion,” board member Al David Uy, beside her — while declining PDP–Laban’s invitations, forswearing any national conversion, and tying her political future to the impeachment trial’s outcome. The party’s public record carries the PDP national affiliation it has held since 2019. (Wikipedia — Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod, Manila Bulletin, Wikipedia)

Challenges and Controversies

A Regional Party Leading a National Slate

HNP’s 2019 role — a regionally registered party fronting a national coalition — drew the standing question of Philippine party law: what a regional party may legitimately do in national contests. The coalition’s sweep answered it practically, but the party’s later retreat from any national conversion, confirmed by its chairwoman in 2025, closed the question the other way. (Wikipedia, Manila Bulletin)

The 2021 Resignation and the Borrowed Banner

Sara Duterte’s November 11, 2021 resignation from the party she founded — to run under Lakas–CMD — split the family vehicle from the national campaign and generated rival readings: a legal necessity of the national race, or the subordination of the regional machine to a rented banner. Her May 2023 exit from Lakas–CMD’s chairmanship, documented in this wiki’s Lakas–CMD entry, completed the circuit back to Hugpong. (PNA, Manila Bulletin)

The Contraction After the Rupture

The party’s shrinkage to a self-described membership of two by September 2025 — amid the impeachments, the expulsions and defections that followed the Marcos–Duterte break, and the family’s reliance on the local Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod for its 2025 candidacies — is documented fact; whether HNP can be rebuilt for a 2028 presidential cycle, in which its chairwoman has announced her candidacy, is the open question the record leaves. (Manila Bulletin, Wikipedia — Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod)

Ideological Classification

The party’s public record frames it in Davao regionalism and populism — the “Dutertismo” label of the era’s scholarship — rather than in a programmatic platform; the classification is attributed, not neutral description, and this entry records both the label and the party’s own “Alliance for Change” self-description. (Wikipedia)