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Political fiesta in the
Philippines
By Diana Mendoza
MANILA - "It's so funny one could cry," the
community newspaper Mabuhay said in a photo caption
about an obscure presidential candidate who was putting
on a show before an amused crowd at the Philippines'
Commission on Elections. In many ways, this description
says it all for the part-circus, part-fiesta election
campaign that started this month in the run-up to the
May 10 presidential elections in this Southeast Asian
country of 80 million people.
On February 10,
the start of the 90-day campaign period, local
newspapers splashed the photos of six presidential
candidates - the English-language Philippine Daily
Inquirer arranged them horse-race-style with the
headline "There they go ..."
The six are
incumbent President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, movie star
Fernando Poe Jr, Senator Panfilo Lacson, former senator
and education secretary Raul Roco, evangelist Eddie
Villanueva, and Eddie Gil, a self-described businessman.
They were the only ones accredited by the Elections
Commission out of more than 80 persons - most of them
nuisance candidates - who wanted to become president.
Early public opinion surveys have indicated a
four-cornered fight among Arroyo, Poe, Lacson and Roco.
If trimmed further to two, it would only be Arroyo and
Poe.
Since the campaign got under way, the
mudslinging has increased and provided everyday
surprises on the noisy campaign trail. But this has yet
to provide substance to 40 million registered voters,
nearly 5 million of whom are young people who just
turned or are turning 18 and are eligible to cast their
votes on election day.
"There are many choices
for president. I haven't picked out the one I'm going to
vote. I haven't learned anything from them, really,"
said Jose Karlo Rafada, a computer student of the
state-run Polytechnic University of the Philippines.
Rafada had been caught in a traffic jam on the
way to school when the campaign caravan of presidential
candidate Lacson, reported in the papers as consisting
of 1,000 vehicles on February 11, occupied the main
highway from Manila to his home town of Cavite, an hour
away.
Crowds and onlookers watched as Lacson
waved from the open roof of a sport-utility vehicle,
leading his entourage of supporters wearing red shirts.
Similar campaigns by presidential candidates
Arroyo, the incumbent, and Poe also caused bottlenecks
along the road last week, so much so that some schools
and offices declared a half-day schedule.
Mikaela Corpuz, who tends a stall selling street
food and phone cards, says the campaign is "dizzying",
but she has made a choice. "I will vote for the one
who's going to work hard to correct whatever mistakes we
have committed in the past."
She said she will
vote for Arroyo to continue what she has begun, "never
mind her corrupt husband, because she can be on her
own". Arroyo's husband, lawyer Jose Miguel Arroyo, has
been accused of laundering illegal funds using a false
name, but he has denied the allegations.
But the
young Rafada has yet to hear from each candidate and be
convinced. "I am looking for one who can remove my [job]
jitters," he said. "I'm afraid I won't be employed after
my graduation a year from now. Otherwise, I'll leave the
country and work abroad, like everybody else."
Editorials say this year's election is the most
contentious in a long time in Philippine history. It
holds high stakes for a country that has been grappling
with political instability since 2001, when president
Joseph Estrada was ousted on corruption charges, and
woes highlighted by a still-plunging peso and
unemployment rate of more than 10 percent - higher than
many other Southeast Asian countries.
"We will
be in for a long period of violent unrest from which it
might take decades to recover. With our neighbors
leaving us behind, every Filipino has a stake in seeing
to it that the elections will be peaceful and clean,"
the Philippine Star newspaper said in an editorial.
Officials in January identified nearly 500
violence-prone hotspots nationwide, many of them in
southern Mindanao. They also identified 169 private
armed groups belonging to political warlords. Police in
these localities have started recording deaths and
injuries as a result of assassinations, ambushes and
murders.
Thousands of public-school teachers who
will render poll duty have asked for better security and
better pay in an election where public officials from
president down to members of Congress and local
officials will also be voted in.
Meanwhile,
analyst Amando Doronila of the Inquirer is worried that
vital concerns about the economy and poverty - 40
percent of Filipinos live below the poverty line - have
been sidestepped by fleeting issues such as questions
about Poe's citizenship. (The constitution prohibits
foreigners from becoming president, and Poe is alleged
to be an American. The Supreme Court is considering the
issue.)
Doronila says few lessons can be gained
from a campaign where ideas will be drowned out by
entertainment. "There is little to show that the voters
will emerge from the campaign better illuminated than
they have been during the past few months, when issues
were avoided like contagious disease," he wrote.
The year began with candidates being asked by
family-planning advocates to say something about the
country's large population, growing by 1.8 million a
year, and widespread poverty. Half of the population is
made up of young people below 21. President Arroyo
repeated her policy of promoting only natural family
planning and respecting the freedom of couples to
decide. Roco wants couples to be informed of the range
of methods for planning families, while Lacson suggested
copying the country's neighbors of having just two
children to slow down population growth. Poe did not
have a ready answer.
But the brief foray into
issue-based debate did not gain momentum as the
candidates have been scouring one another's flaws and
private lives, with reports of mistresses and
illegitimate children hogging the headlines. Poe
admitted to having a child with a former actress.
Moral conduct then became the hottest topic, but
even that has been eclipsed by the spin coming from
candidates' advertisements that debuted recently in
major television networks and print outlets, all
artistically shot by professional advertising agencies -
one of them plucked from Hollywood.
Public
opinion surveys show a tight contest between Arroyo and
Poe, one of the latest with Poe garnering 36 percent and
Arroyo 27 percent.
(Inter Press Service)
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