With its presidential tandem in place, the ruling Lakas-Kampi - CMD faces another difficult task of deciding its senatorial line-up, with tacticians mulling whether to field a complete slate or adopt outside candidates to forge a tactical alliance with other parties.

As it gets ready for its November 19 national convention, party leaders are having a hard time completing their 12-man senatorial ticket, and some senior party men are batting for the adoption of Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Miriam Defensor Santiago.

Ray Roquero, party deputy secretary-general, said that aside from the completing the senatorial team, the Lakas-Kampi-CMD is preparing for Thursday’s national convention slated at the Philippine International Convention Center Reception Hall.

At least 4,000 party officials – from the national down to the grassroots leadership – have been invited to the convention to nominateDefense Secretary Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro Jr. as its standard bearer and actor Edu Manzano as his running mate for the May 2010 elections.

“All eyes will be on this convention. This is a feast for the eyes, an appeal to the heart and a pitch to the intellect. We are transitioning from being the party of the present to the party of the future,” Roquero said in a radio interview.

Roquero said the program departs from the traditional spectacle of a party convention in keeping with Lakas-Kampi CMD’s new look under the leadership of a new generation of reformers who are bent on transforming the Philippines, in the shortest possible time, into a modern progressive nation in Southeast Asia.

“The Convention will be conducted in a novel, creative, non-traditional way without losing the essence of a political convention,” Roquero told Radyo ng Bayan.

It will be energized by high-definition computer visuals, projected on a video wall, and a play of sounds and lights that projects the modern party’s overarching goal. Underlying the spectacle in the Filipino-themed convention is a modern rendering of the party’s marching song, which will be heard in the convention for the first time, Roquero said.

“The convention is a perfect mix of quiet dignity and compelling drama, of energy and inspiration to achieve the national goal,” Roquero said.

"It will dwarf all other political conventions. It will be moving, entertaining, riveting,” he said.

The convention will also highlight the merged parties’ achievements during 15 of the last 17 years that it held the reins of power. Fidel Ramos, who founded Lakas-NUCD, the mother party, in 1992, won the presidency that same year, and President Arroyo was elected in 2004, after coming to power on the heels of People Power II in January 2001.

The reform policies the two presidents initiated, under the party’s overarching centrist ideology and Christian-Muslim partnership, produced wide-ranging reforms in public policies that vastly improved national life.

They ushered in political stability and hastened economic recovery—giving the incoming leadership in 2010 a solid foundation to hasten reforms to modernize the country in the age of globalization.