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Confusing the issue

05/08/07

Posted under May 2007 elections, Philippine politics

Doro (as Amando Doronila is called, by everyone who knows him) is back in Australia, working on the galleys of his memoirs, but he remains very much engaged in Philippine politics. Yesterday, in his Monday analysis for the Inquirer, he pointed out the obvious: The emperor has no clothes.

Next week’s midterm vote, in other words, is not a referendum on the Arroyo administration.

Others may still quarrel with him on this point; I myself would like to nuance the argument (”it is no longer a black-and-white referendum on the administration”). But he does have a point.

The campaign over the past three months has developed into one of the greatest non-issue elections since the republic’s creation in 1946.

Well, perhaps the mid-term elections of 1995 was more soporific, if we gauge public apathy or the lack of it. But it does seem to be true, yes, that this year “both sides have been talking past each other.”

As I have written before, part of this dynamic is explained by the opposition’s lack of preparation. The quality of the opposition candidates selected to replace third-termers Alan Cayetano and Chiz Escudero (Alan’s wife, Chiz’s uncle) seems to me to encapsulate the lack of strategic rigor, of “party” discipline, that undermines the opposition. And yet these elections were the opposition’s to lose. As Doro points out: “opinion surveys show a broad undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the Arroyo administration’s performance and manifest abuse of power. The opposition has failed to tap this undertow of grievances.”

It must also be said, however, that the administration successfully confused the issues at stake in the elections by framing the contest as a proxy fight between President Arroyo (and the economic growth she says she represents) and ex-President Joseph Estrada.

A third factor — and the main point I wish to raise in this post — is the candidates’ own and repeated attempts to reach out to non-base voters.

Take a look at the (successful) campaign Escudero is conducting: Not a single one of his campaign ads raises specific issues against the Arroyo administration. We have the (successful, effective) scenario-building of a young man who can still fit into a grade school student’s seat, talking in general terms about what he dreams of becoming. (I want to be a senator, one student says in Filipino, to which Chiz replies, Me too!)

His radio ads have perhaps been focus-grouped to perfection: The one I keep hearing confronts (successfully, effectively) his oppositionist image as a Naysayer by reminding listeners that he can say Yes too (to motherhood issues: more jobs at home, and so on).

I read Chiz’s campaign as a (successful, effective) reaching out to non-opposition voters.

Other opposition candidates have also struck the same tone: Loren Legarda’s creative reminders to make her No. 1, Manny Villar’s powerful rags-to-riches story, etc.

Administration candidates have also succeeded, in their advertising, in keeping the issue personality-oriented. Even Joker Arroyo’s campaign, which began (or rather picked up from where he left off in 2001) with the scowling Roman symbol and a matching tone (”Pag bad ka, lagot ka” — classic “fiscalizer” mode, something that goes back to elections since 1946) has lately softened its uncompromising image. Now the Joker icon can also be seen smiling, and the tagline has been diluted to include, well, a motherhood statement straight out of the 1970s: “Pag good ka, okay ka.”

Focus group discussion, anyone?

By John Nery
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