The other day, I was asked yet another question about intelligent electorates. Do Filipinos vote for the most popular, even if the most popular are not necessarily the most qualified? Or (to use the terms the interviewers used): Is the Filipino “audience” intelligent? How about the Filipino “electorate”?
I gave a qualified answer, of course, making a distinction between the way we vote for the presidency and the way we vote for the Senate. I use that same distinction in my column of February 10, where I propose that our next president, come May 2010, can only be either of the following: Kabayan, Loren, Manny Villar, Chiz, Ping, and Mar. (Is the fact that Manny Villar does not have a ready one-word handle boon or bane?)
But it is possible, even when we only have a single vote to cast rather than the 12 we can use for the Senate, to send clear signals to the candidates, a point I raised in passing in my column of February 3.
Consider the case of Loren Legarda. The 1998 Senate topnotcher, she did not do well in the voters’ preferences surveys conducted by SWS in the run-up to the 2004 vote.
In the December 2002 survey, for example, Raul Roco and FPJ topped the list, with Kabayan and GMA in striking distance. Loren, however, had a measly dieter’s slice of the pie.
In that same survey, however, Legarda did quite well in the vice-presidential list. She placed second to Kabayan (who had just topped the Senate race a year and a half before, in 2001).
As it turns out (here is an SWS news release for its November 2003 survey, about a year after the first poll), Legarda’s vice-presidential qualities (to coin a phrase) impressed more and more Filipinos. By November 2003, the race between De Castro and Legarda had become a real contest.
My point: In 2004, voters were discriminating enough to make a distinction between Legarda as president and Legarda as vice-president. (In contrast, voters were equally happy to say they would vote for Noli de Castro either as president or as vice-president — at least until FPJ threw his hat into the ring.) I see that distinction-making as a sign that, in fact, and by and large, voters in the aggregate know what they want.
Here, then, is intelligence, of a sort, at work.
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6 Feedbacks on "Learning from Loren"
Jeff Lopez
The choice of the Filipino “audience” or “electorate” really does not matter as they only go to the polls but their votes are not truly counted. With a corrupt and easily-manipulated COMELEC the votes are used to reflect the margin but not the true results of the election. Does “Hello, Garci” ring a bell?
Jeff Lopez, San Diego, CA
Bibi Ngo
there are just things that you wanna have faith in, and actually somehow believe in looking at some relative facts without having to see specific details. I believe that the Filipino is “getting smarter in terms of who to support with a vote.” Throughout the years, that’s what seems to be the case, at least in my perspective. This article somehow helps my faith in the Filipino to be concretized.
Cecilio Decolongon
It is straight forward. If we were intelligent voters as a people we should have had at least good leaders who are competent and not corrupt. Our current state tells us clearly what we are. It doesn’t take deep thinking or statistics or analysis to realize this.
June Serrano
As they say better the devil you know!!!
Julius Dumangas
Overall, Filipinos are intelligent voters most of the time. Visit the provinces in Mindanao during elections and you’ll see this calculating intelligence. They will sell their votes to the highest bidder most of the time because they have long realized that it’s foolish to vote intelligently when election outcomes most of the time don’t make a real differences in their lives. Still, I believe we can effectively discriminate what is good or bad for us> we can be intelligent when we are given real choices. the benefits of loren as president don’t outweigh the P500 each voter can get in a vote-buying transactions.
Taga Sampaloc
Learning from LOREN? No, thanks. I would rather learn from Miriam. At least I would be amused.
I would not give-up my front row seat to watch these grandstanding “clowns” in Congress to fall in line as Miriam would threaten them for retribution for voting their “conscience”.
She could eat all of them for breakfast, chew them and spit them out.
Is it not nice for entertainment?
If she could not impress you with her brilliance she would dazzle you with legalistic B.S.
I like her because she is either courageous or insane to do what she does.
Don’t you like her? Come on, folks.
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