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FPJ: The Philippines' man of the
masa
By Marco Garrido
MANILA - For many Filipinos, movie star Fernando
Poe Jr's announcement of presidential candidacy has made
the 2004 elections an event to dread. "It's final,"
fumed Noel Sibala, a municipal councilor from Mati,
Davao; "I'll quit and leave this miserable country ...
[It] will go to the dogs with FPJ [as Poe is locally
known] as president".
People like Sibala fear that Poe's
immense popularity among the 
nation's poor
will translate into electoral invincibility and sweep a
man utterly unfit for office into the presidency. Poe
lacks political experience and would seem to be the
puppet of his political handlers. Moreover, Poe being
the handpicked selection of his friend and former
action-movie co-star, deposed president Joseph Estrada,
an FPJ presidency would seem poised to reinstall the
Estrada faction into power and perhaps even reproduce
its depredations.
In short order, the debate for
and against an FPJ presidency has spun off a corollary
debate over what qualifies a person to be president of
the Philippines. The arguments of the anti-FPJ camp have
been labeled elitist by Poe's supporters and by others
perturbed by what they perceive to be the haughtiness of
mainstream anti-FPJ sentiment. So FPJ dropped out of
high school, they say: nine US presidents never finished
college, including George Washington and Abraham
Lincoln. So FPJ lacks political experience: call it
political innocence. So FPJ is Estrada's buddy: this
doesn't mean he won't be his own president. Unlike
Estrada, Poe has been impervious to allegations of
corruption, and most unlike Estrada, he seems to be
monogamous.
But the truth is, Poe hardly needs
apologists. It would even seem that, for the bulk of
Poe's supporters, his lack of education and credentials
- his general incompetence for the presidency by usual
standards - is a kind of qualification in itself. And
his apparent reluctance to declare his candidacy, to
dirty himself with politics, is an affirmation of his
fitness as a leader.
The bulk of Poe's support
comes from the masa - the poor. Yes, the masa are
the vast base of the nation's socioeconomic pyramid -
the C, D, and E brackets of tax classifications A
through E - but poverty fails to capture the full
connotation, the full derogation, of the term and other
terms like it, from probinsyano (from the
province) to bakya (cheap wooden clogs). The word
masa lacks the dignity of "the people" and the
neutrality of "the masses"; it is more akin in
connotation with the phrase "the great unwashed". The
word connotes a divide that is all but palpable; that is
evident in complexion and language (the higher classes
tend to be lighter-skinned and speak with a lot of
English words interspersing their Filipino), in position
(the masa serve as the drivers and manicurists,
nannies and houseboys of the upper classes) - and is
reproduced in politics.
Masa political
behavior can diverge sharply from that of the rest - or
rather, the remainder - of the nation. The masa
are faulted with buying into a politics of popularity;
electing basketball players to Congress, television
newscasters to the Senate, and, of course, a movie star
for president. They are belittled for pawning their
political rights, for renting themselves out as
demonstrators, for yielding their votes in exchange for
a hot meal. The A and B brackets regard them as vulgar
and vicious, entrapped in a culture of despair and
dependence and greatly in need of political education -
that is, so the masa will vote the same way they
do. The masa make an easy scapegoat for the
failure of Philippine political leaders. They are
regarded as a constituency of the uncivilized: democracy
is wasted on them.
But this perspective fails to
see that democracy works for them, at least insofar as
it allows them to upset the usual politics of privilege
in favor of populist politics. Masa political
preferences are hardly arbitrary. They compose rational
choices based on experiences of disfranchisement in
everything but the vote. They may judge their candidates
by different standards than those held by the so-called
educated electorate, but this invalidates neither their
choices nor the rationality behind them.
Political scientist Randy David wisely observes
that the masa tend to choose movie stars and
media personalities "not simply because they know them
by name, but because, rightly or wrongly, they see in
them the qualities that dissolve the remoteness of the
powerful". Thus, while they may conflate FPJ with his
on-screen persona as the object of abuse turned
instrument of righteous vengeance, they see someone
familiar, someone who speaks their language, endures
their adversity and triumphs in the way they hope to
triumph - someone who connects their experiences with
their dreams. FPJ would seem to represent them in a way
that certainly no traditional politician, however
educated or experienced, has.
These competing
preferences cause cleavages throughout the nation. They
index conflicting images of leadership (the reformist
technocrat vs the populist hero), differing conceptions
of the national dilemma (inefficient governance vs
intrinsically unjust social arrangements), and,
ultimately, dissimilar experiences as Filipinos. "Anyone
who can still stand back from the daily vexations that
erode our morale will know at once that this social
order cannot be sustained in its present form," writes
David. Without some measure to ease the gulf of
inequality dividing the nation, some form of
power-sharing arrangement, David predicts "an escalating
war punctuated by increasingly unruly EDSA-style
upheavals". (EDSA, of course, stands for Manila's
Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue and denotes the
people-power movements that deposed presidents Ferdinand
Marcos and Estrada. Lately, it has resurfaced in morally
degraded forms, as popular means to bypass legal
channels of dissent.)
With FPJ's announcement of
presidential candidacy, the drums of EDSA have been
sounded in all camps. An imminent victory for Poe would
rouse a civil society of mainly middle-class
composition. It still remembers unseating Estrada and
will not lightly abide another president seemingly in
his mold. If incumbent President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
wins, the FPJ camp will surely take to the streets. The
masa will not believe she beat him in fair
elections. And even if the hordes are put down, it will
only be for the time being. A re-elected Arroyo would
preside over the profoundly cleft polity of a nation, as
David noted, at war with itself. FPJ's announcement of
candidacy, by sounding the trumpet blast of the
masa, has ensured that even should Arroyo win,
she has already lost.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
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