A discussion in Newsstand led me to collate the following poll results from the four Pulse Asia surveys — July 2006, November 2006, January 2007, March 2007 — on the current Senate race. I think a closer look at these results, now strung together in a crude timeline, will prove profitable (with the usual caveats, of course).

The first three have a margin of error of plus/minus 3; the fourth, which was conducted as though it were an electoral exercise, had a bigger sample and is more accurate, with a margin of error of plus/minus 2. 

I realize that pollsters can, at times, make mistakes. But if we limit ourselves to the Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia surveys, bring our own experience to bear on our reading of the results, engage the polling process critically, and bear in mind that  successful politicians read the surveys too, perhaps we can get somewhere, yes?

pulse-2007.htm

Let’s crunch the numbers later.

AHA, as Charlie Chan supposedly said when he examined a stab victim: “the clot thickens.”

The Inquirer editorial today takes strong exception to the attempt to transfer Rep. Satur Ocampo to Leyte and compares it to the style of the German Gestapo. Columnist Amando Doronila says official actions (the Ocampo “kidnapping,” as he puts it) are belied by official rhetoric (the President’s speech to the graduating class of the Philippine Military Academy). But for every expression of concern over the government’s handling of persons and groups it considers threats, there are also equally strong manifestations of support.

Their claims to the contrary notwithstanding, radicals have always been a minority in our society: but among radicals, believers in Mao Zedong Thought (see the entry under “Maoism” in the Encyclopedia of Marxism) compose the majority of radicals though even they are divided between those who want to pursue a “people’s war,” and those who’ve decided to pursue a peaceful political path (more or less). .John’s last post suggests to me that while Mao Zedong himself viewed victory as inevitable, Filipino believers in Mao are stuck with the reality that victory hasn’t been achieved for forty years -and isn’t about to take place anytime soon.

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In the Philippines, what do the Right and the Left have in common? They both think the United States, effectively, still runs the country.

I once shared a panel with the eminent Luis Teodoro, the professor of journalism and tireless columnist whose leftist creds are the stuff of legend. We were taking part in a forum in the University of the Philippines, and for his closing remarks the man many journalists simply call Dean (a post he once held) chose to remind the audience (college journalism students, most of them) about what for him must have been a central fact of life: “Nothing happens in the Philippines without the Americans.”

I smiled when he said that, and took careful mental note of exactly what he said. (To be sure, he may have said “in our country” instead of “in the Philippines,” but the start and the end of his sentence I vividly remember.) It was decidedly non-academic of him to phrase his conclusion in absolute terms. Nothing? Absolutely nothing? In my turn, I said something about living in the world as it is, not as we think it is, but I did not really engage his point (or, for that matter, his audience).

I do not doubt that the United States still exercises inordinate influence in the Philippines, but does it in fact still run the country? Perhaps Dean would have done better to nuance his position, say by limiting his observation to pivotal events in recent Philippine history (then perhaps it would be possible to make a case), but where’s the fun in that?

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MLQ has started a new topic, but I still have a few things to say about the first one (American influence in Philippine politics) and also some housekeeping points to list down. 

Let me, for now, write the following notes on this “work in progress.”

We welcome comments, of course, but unfortunately they have to be moderated. My own idea of a public square is approximated by an unmoderated comment thread, with the occasional offensive or obscene comment deleted after (if possible, immediately after) it is posted. But as Joey Alarilla has made clear to Manolo and me, the comment thread is also available by RSS feed.

… once a comment is posted, it’s already been sent out via RSS even after we delete it, plus our readers might already have been exposed to something very offensive.

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THAT was originally the title of a December 2005 column of mine. Lest we forget, 2005 was the year the President basically put to a close the Ramos-era policy of attracting rebels by means of an amnesty policy.

The debate between the government and its critics boils is often portrayed as boiling down to this.

The government says, the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army are the enemy; and that the enemy derives aid and comfort from organizations that use their legal status as a means to camouflage what basically amounts to treason against the Republic.

Critics of this policy, on the other hand, say that the government is wrong, because it cannot prove that the National Democratic Front, and parties, such as Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Anakpawis, etc. either endorse or actively support the CPP-NPA. And that furthermore, it is scandalous for the government to deny that members of these legal parties are being targeted by assassins linked to the military.

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TODAY’S Inquirer editorial tackles the same issue that has consumed the attention of this new blog in its first days: the Boxer hearing in the US Senate. The crux of the newspaper’s position:

Does the Boxer inquiry constitute interference in Philippine political affairs? We say No, for two specific reasons. We say this despite the well-known fact that the US government still exercises inordinate influence in the Philippines.

FIFTEEN years after the US military bases in the Philippines closed shop, the political reality Manolo described yesterday remains disconcertingly accurate:

The test of the mettle of a Filipino leader has always been how he negotiates with Uncle Sam, and the proof of the ability of a Filipino administration is whether it gets a friendly hearing or not from Washington.

By and large, this is still true today despite the growth in closer Asean relations, despite President Macapagal-Arroyo’s symbolic first visit to Malaysia upon assuming the presidency, despite the many overtures to China. I do not think, though, that any Philippine politician working today (or, ah, not working) actually conceives of Philippine-American relations as a special relationship. What we have, or so it seems to me, is the detritus of a colonial relationship or, to change metaphors, the amputee’s sense that the leg long since sawn off is still there, below the knee.

(Besides, the term “special relationship” has no meaning to American politicians except perhaps as an infrequently used reminder of the state of US-UK relations.)

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WHEN INQUIRER.net editor in chief JV Rufino asked John Nery and myself to start blogging for the online counterpart of our mother paper, I leaped at the opportunity to work more closely with John, and with the good folks at INQUIRER.net. But it took me some time to figure out how on earth I’d differentiate this new effort from my own blog.

In the end, it seems to me, the medium defines itself. My own blog is, well, mine -while this one is shared. My own blog is my personal soapbox, and is written for a general audience. Therefore, from the universal (my blog) we go to the particular (this blog), and from the personal, to a joint effort. This blog is very clearly part of the Inquirer family of publications, upholds the regulations and ethics of the whole, and is aimed at a particular kind of reader: you, the loyal reader of the Inquirer.

So to differentiate my writing here from my writing elsewhere, I decided, first of all, to limit my advocacy to my Inquirer column or my blog. Personally, because I have never been a reporter but always, an opinion writer, I happen to think commenting on the political scene necessarily leads to some kind of political involvement. But that that is something I can do in a column and my personal blog, but which doesn’t serve the best interests or hopefully, helpfulness, of this blog.

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