After Migz Zubiri was proclaimed as the 12th winning senator, my co-blogger and Inquirer colleague Manolo wrote a rather controversial column, asking Zubiri’s critics to wish him well.

I believe that those of us who have been his critics, or, to be precise, we who have been highly critical of the circumstances surrounding his election, should take the lead in wishing him well. Regardless of the circumstances under which he has finally come to assume a seat in the Senate, one can only hope he will aspire to statesmanship in the performance of his duties.

Nick of Tingog.com did not share Manolo’s view. Positing that performance was entirely different from integrity, he declined to accept Manolo’s suggestion.

Manuel seems to be putting more emphasis on the words that come out of our Fake Senator Zubiri rather than the actions that he makes. Talk is good, but a man’s actions is truly the only way we can judge him. And if his actions are for closing his eyes to the obvious cheating in Maguindanao, then how can we even start to trust him in helping lead our country.

(I found Nick’s post a day earlier even more cogent. He wrote: “Right now Migz Zubiri is on top of the world but acknowledges that he has an image problem. But screw that self analysis, the real problem with Daya na Zubiri is that he has an integrity problem. How can he redeem himself when he cannot even acknowledge the real problem of benefiting from cheating?”)

An integrity problem, indeed. Manolo waxed optimistic about Zubiri’s potential for growth, seeing the possibility that, perhaps in filing election reform legislation, he “can turn a term of scorn into a badge of pride.”

What if, precisely in order to turn a term of scorn into a badge of pride, he makes a mockery of the election process itself?

That is the substance of my criticism against Zubiri, in my column today. He has filed a cynical counter-protest against Koko Pimentel designed to turn the Senate Electoral Tribunal’s recount into the political equivalent of the Energizer bunny: something that will keep going, and going, and going …

Election reform, I think it is safe to say, is not on his mind.

The full text of the relevant passage follows:

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The proclamation of Migz Zubiri as the 12th senator elected in the 2007 mid-term polls —- despite evidence that the results in Maguindanao province were manufactured, by and large —- was deeply depressing news. I don’t mean it wasn’t inevitable; in fact, that was what was wrong with Zubiri’s “victory” in the first place. It was slow-motion theft; we could all see it coming, a mile away, and in the end we couldn’t prevent it from happening.

This same sense of frustration may have moved the Black and White Movement to release a statement, drenched in sarcasm, a few hours after the proclamation. If you need a little pick-me-up, give it a read:

YA GOTTA HAND IT TO MIGZ
 
GOD helps those that help themselves. So when Migz Zubiri thanked God, he was also thanking Gloria, Garci, Bedol, and Abalos: the faces of our modern “democrazy”.

Imagine that.  The power and the glory now belong to Migz, now, if not forever. We commiserate with Chavit Singson ­ how in heaven’s name could Chavit have lost his top rank to Migz?  Poor guy must be really depressed.  What a difference a month makes. Chavit was once upon a time first in Maguindanao: but as we now know, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.  Even the improbable ones.

Now, Migz owes a lot. When he thanked God, Mama Mary, and all the saints, he was being a grateful person. Grateful, maybe not to the people of Maguindanao, but definitely thankful to all those who helped make his election as credible as Mrs. Arroyo’s 2004 victory. As the second most impoverished province of ARMM, we can only hope Maguindanao gets the attention it deserves from him and that it’s not just the usual suspects, who get to enjoy the blessings helping Migz win will give.

As for the millions of us that voted for Koko Pimentel, we had it coming. We were old-fashioned enough to believe what mattered more was a genuine mandate, that our votes would count as much as the votes for Migz. How were we to know, that neither our votes nor Migz’ votes, mattered at all? What mattered most was never in the public’s hands: it was the counting, and who did the counting, that mattered. It didn’t even matter if the votes were there, and it didn’t matter if all anyone wanted was a chance to vote again, without terrorism and manufactured documents substituting for an election.

It has been a month since my last post; my apologies for dropping off the radar screen, but I have been unusually busy. With luck, this busy-ness, or at least parts of it, should bear fruit starting next week. My thanks to colleague Manolo for keeping the blog going, and to our growing band of readers who continue to post very interesting comments indeed. (More about this, later this week.) 

On to the present, which, as luck would have it, is all about the past: I was struck last month by a column of Billy Esposo’s in the Star, which offered an assessment of the columnist’s reliability as a political crystal-ball gazer.

I thought Esposo did the honorable thing: Unlike any other mainstream media political commentator I know, he asked his readers to judge his political prognostications. But a close look at his column, and at other columns he had written (easily accessible here), tells us that Esposo undermined his own experiment, by choosing to write about only those predictions that had, willy-nilly, come true.

In other words, Esposo inserted a new mono-bloc into journalism’s musical chairs game —- and then promptly wrecked it.

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The various cheating scenarios taken together paint a bleak picture for the Commission on Elections; a unique dilemma confronts it in Maguindanao. A declaration on Monday of a failure of elections, necessary to call special elections in the province, will necessarily invalidate the victories of local candidates already proclaimed. Or, rather, the proclaimed winners who cannot prove that elections had actually taken place in their respective areas will be un-proclaimed, and forced to contest the elections again.

One cheating scenario, which Migs Zubiri has vehemently and energetically refuted, involves rigging the Senate vote in the special elections. Another cheating scenario, already amply documented, involved massive cheating or even entirely fabricated election results at the local level. These scenarios, however, require the complicity of Comelec officials.

Hence, the dilemma. The patrons at the national level who want special elections called no longer share a common interest with the clients at the local level who have already been proclaimed. What to do, what to do!?

As one opposition lawyer SMS’ed me the other day: “Someone should ask Gloria very tactfully if Z is worth all the trouble.”

Something’s been puzzling me the last two weeks.

Immediately after the elections, the Commission on Elections estimated that anywhere between 65 and 85 percent of registered voters had cast their ballots. (As an estimate, offered by a possibly innumerate Comelec chairman, the figure is too vague to be truly useful. Given 45 million voters, a 20-percent range means Benjamin Abalos could have been off by as many as 9 million voters.)

On the eve of the elections, the Comelec had forecast an 83-percent turnout, based on the 2004 vote.

This was, more or less, the “forecast” one could conclude from a Social Weather Stations survey, which found that 86 percent of survey respondents said they were likely to vote. It was this survey, too, which led me to conclude that Loren Legarda, consistently enjoying ratings of around 60 percent, would be the first person to earn over 20 million votes in Philippine election history.

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Unless we say it is. That, apparently, is the administration coalition’s take on the 2007 mid-term elections.

The Senate contest is not a referendum on the Arroyo presidency, because, well, the administration has lost the majority of seats at stake. But the congressional and local races? They are a referendum because the administration won most of the positions at stake.

This “frame” is there for all to see, in a full-page ad that the administration coalition (that’s Lakas, Kampi, NPC, Liberal-Atienza wing, LDP, and PDSP) are running in tomorrow’s papers. It turns out that all coalition candidates had “offered a clear choice to the Filipino people” — including, I suppose, all those coalition candidates, such as Mark Lapid of Lakas and Baby Pineda of Kampi, who ran against each other.

Apart from the framing (another example: 2007 was “an election generally predicted as a referendum on the economic performance of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo” — nice, that subtle use of the dismal science), the advertisement is interesting for the lists it provides of the winning coalition candidates: 183 congressmen (including, ah, transplanted Bicolano Dato Arroyo); 64 governors (including Joey Salceda of Albay, who ran as an independent against an incumbent Lakas governor, another clear example of the “clear choice” the coalition offered the Filipino people); and 101 city mayors (including Charter change exponent Rep. Constantino Jaraula).

I will bet, however, that this ad will become more interesting around the third or fourth week of July, when jockeying for positions in the House will cause a few more of that quaint fruit, the balimbing, to fall from the tree.

JUST a quick thought. Whether anyone likes it or not, the next presidential campaign begins on June 30, 2007 when the new batch of senators join the 14th Congress. While the counting isn’t over, the top six or so senatorial rankings seem beyond dispute, and among them are some candidates being discussed as presidential aspirants. What does their senatorial victory tell us about their presidential prospects? I’ve linked the survey results graphs for each candidate.

1. Loren Legarda: Was her vote purely on her own merits, or a sympathy vote for 2004? And the real question is: even as the senatorial top-notcher, is the country prepared for another female president?

2. Chiz Escudero: Phenomenal popularity and a marvelously efficient campaign. The man to watch, particularly as the country’s going through one of its periodic generational shifts. But too young to be president?

3. Ping Lacson: He held his own, but didn’t make major gains. He proved he has a solid constituency that will vote for him, consistently. But there wasn’t any “cross-over,” and he hasn’t proven he can attract additional support.

4. Manny Villar: The biggest loser, in terms of his presidential prospects. A lackluster campaign, massive spending for ads but not enough bang for the buck; he hoped the Vice-President’s endorsement would help, but the Vice-President serves with an administration that got rejected in terms of the national vote. The Vice-President endorsed Ralph Recto, too, and it didn’t seem to help, either. And he has to retain the senate presidency.

Sometimes we can read too much into the “meaning” of a particular vote.

I found Raul Pangalangan’s last column, on the meaning of the Honasan-Trillanes vote, a provocative read. I especially thought this particular passage was right on the money.

By manipulating the various arms of government to harass its enemies and protect its own, the Arroyo government has weakened the rule of law. It has conditioned the people to look to end-results — stop corruption, improve education, expand health care, make housing more accessible — and be indifferent to the means, constitutional or not. It has lowered the bar, so to speak, that the law has placed to guard against extra-constitutional power grabs.

This weakening of the rule of law — “culture of impunity,” anyone? — must be counted as one of the main legacies of the Arroyo administration.

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Here’s something interesting from a May 19 Inquirer.net report:

ABS-CBN reporter Lynda Jumilla said the Comelec’s education and information division (EID) used to help reporters add up the figures. However, these were still unaudited results by the Comelec and, therefore, could not be considered official.

Jumilla also covered the 1992, 1995, 1998 and 2004 elections.

She said this was the first time that she added up the results of the COCs on her own without the EID’s help.

“They used to give us the running totals at a certain hour of the day. But those were still unaudited,” she said. “This time, if we rely on the Comelec to give us totals, we’ll get them tomorrow. By then, the story would be stale.”

Jumilla said she tried to be as careful as she could by listening intently to the canvassers read out the COC results. She said she would jot these down in her notebook and the tally sheet provided by a media officer, and countercheck her figures with other reporters….

If she makes a mistake, “I’m willing to point it out in my next story,” Jumilla said.

Comelec executive director Pio Jose Joson, who also chairs the canvassing supervisory committee, admitted that the poll body was slow in releasing the official results.

The above is a long explanation of this depressing detail:

(There is a huge tally board at the gate of the Philippine International Convention Center. But it only showed the running total of COCs from the overseas voting.)

Basically, the article reveals that reporters have to do work they shouldn’t be expected to do: accounting. Anyone who’s seen video of Congress during elections in presidential years, will remember that a giant blackboard is a prominent feature of the official canvassing. You’d expect the official canvassing for the senate to feature the same handy reference for everyone, media and the public alike. But apparently not, and this only adds to the lack of trust people have in the system.

Meanwhile Philippine Commentary examines the Comelec count versus Namfrel quick counts. Promises to be a thought-provoking series.

MUCH as I love the Inquirer.net electoral map, we have a long way to go. In Pollster.com, which focuses on survey results, see their  2006 House Race and 2006 Senate Race survey maps.

For actual election results, see this unusually-designed map showing the gains and losses of the parties, for the US House of Representatives in the 2006 race.

A particularly interesting show-and-tell is by M.E.J. Newman, who looks at how to present election results for both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and in a way that shows the relative populations of various areas.

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