Years from now, when analysts seek to understand what went wrong in the 2007 mid-term elections, they will find most of the answers in this masterpiece of deliberate obtuseness: the Brawner decision disqualifying Magsaysay awardee Jesse Robredo, mayor of Naga, from the office he has held honorably, with great distinction, for five complete terms.

Brawner decision

(Thanks to Willy Prilles, Bicol’s leading blogger, for the PDF file.)

JOHN’S latest entry delighted me, not least as it served a reminder of the things we can agree on:

A battle of ideas, at least as far as ideas can be phrased in public debate; strong party identities; a run-off followed by a face-off between the top two candidates, to create a true majority mandate; not least, an election system (involving over 40 million voters, roughly the same size as our electorate) that provides the results within hours of the last vote.

What a wonderful world it would be, indeed. Back when I still worked for him, Teodoro Locsin, Jr. (then publisher of the defunct Today Newspaper, and not yet a Makati congressman) based his opposition to automating elections on the example of the French: they used paper ballots and counted things manually, yet knew the results of their presidential elections within hours of the polls closing.

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John hit the nail on the head when he described the differences in our approach to what we write:

In part that difference may be attributable to the difference in our roles as journalists: As an editor, I seek only to describe the world as I find it; as an opinion columnist, and a historian to boot, he seeks to interpret the world, and perhaps change it.

By sheer coincidence, one of the examples John provides, in his counterpoint to one of the points I raised concerning the coming elections, illustrates the differences between us. He cites the case of ABA-AKO, a party-list group which John says truly represents marginalized sectors, and which twice missed sending its nominees to the House by a “hair’s breadth”: John even points out it was offered victory, but for a price; obviously because it didn’t secure victory, it declined to pay that price.

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Even though the three hypotheses I offered at a talk before business professionals last week were phrased specifically to provoke discussion, Manolo was right to highlight our difference of opinion on the outcome of the coming elections.

In part that difference may be attributable to the difference in our roles as journalists: As an editor, I seek only to describe the world as I find it; as an opinion columnist, and a historian to boot, he seeks to interpret the world, and perhaps change it.

Let me elaborate on our difference of opinion.

Davao Today, under the editorship of good friend Caloy Conde, has started a must-read resource, a series of Q&As with political analysts in the run-up to the May 14 elections. (The questions, incidentally, remain the same, concert piece-like.) Manolo launched it; he was followed by journalism professor Luis Teodoro.  I will take Manolo’s answers in this series as my own springboard for discussion.

1. Manolo says that one of the things at stake in the coming elections involves “a divided civil society,” and posits the view that ”it’s the last hurrah of an entire generation of middle-class activists who became politically involved in the ’80s, and who are fighting to remain relevant.”

I do not see this at all.

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Spoke before a group of business professionals in Makati City today, on the political situation. I saw my role as provoking a spirited Q&A; to that end I proposed three hypotheses about the May 14 elections.

First: The elections remain one way to resolve President Arroyo’s crisis of legitimacy. (See, for instance, what I wrote on August 1, 2005.) One Voice’s forceful and articulate position, that the mid-terms ought to be considered a referendum on the President, is not only borne of a deep faith in democratic practice; it is also faithful to much of our election history.  

Second: The elections are the opposition’s to lose. The SWS survey conducted from February 24 to 27 clearly showed that the public mood is anti-incumbent: A plurality of 36 percent of registered voters said they preferred an opposition candidate for congressman; a plurality of 28 percent said they preferred an opposition candidate for governor; a plurality of 35 percent said they preferred an opposition candidate for mayor.

Third: The opposition will lose the elections, in all aggregates except the most high-profile one, the race for the Senate. This result is an indictment of the opposition — especially its lack of preparation, its state of disorganization. Except for some high-visibility exceptions, such as Sabas Mabulo’s candidacy against Dato Arroyo in Camarines Sur, many of the local races are uncontested by opposition candidates.

Some extenuating circumstances explain the opposition’s lack of preparation: Many oppositionists were forced to spend the last months of 2006 playing defense, against the people’s initiative, against the constituent assembly, against the specter of assassination at the local or community level. Still: It needed more leaders like, say, Noynoy Aquino, who said the other week that planning for the 2010 presidential election (he is, of course,  supporting party-mate Mar Roxas) must start now. Planning for the 2007 mid-terms should have started in mid-2005, when it became clear that the President had a counter-plan against impeachment.

I think the political opposition today, understood as broadly as possible, is in the same stage as the Democrats in the United States in 2004. The question for political junkies is: Does it have its Chuck Schumer, its Rahm Emanuel?

THE Inquirer editorial and Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ both focus on the party-list campaign. The editorial points out the most recent controversy: allegations by Danton Remoto (Chairman of Ang Ladlad, which was denied accreditation by the Comelec) that accreditations are for sale. Fr. Bernas, on the other hand, agrees with those who are asking party-list groups to reveal their nominees, but he suggests that those who want the Comelec to do something, should go to court. The Comelec’s hands, he says, are tied.

Pulse Asia’s released its survey findings on awareness of the party-list, and voters’ preferences, from those safely within the 2% threshold, to all the rest who aren’t doing all that well at all. The survey points to how far the party-list system still has to go, in terms of public awareness and most of all, participation.

I used to read Tony Lopez, when he wrote for Asiaweek. Reading him again after all these years, after Manolo pointed in the direction of his Manila Times column, makes me realize his copy then must have had the benefit of rigorous editing.

He writes:

Eight of its 11 candidates [that is, the opposition’s] are likely to win—if you believe surveys, which in the past had been dead wrong.

He is referring, I reckon, to the latest Pulse Asia survey, conducted April 3-5, which showed an 8-5-2 outcome. But his putdown of that survey, and other surveys showing an opposition trend, is worse than sly; it is, in fact, downright dishonest.

Lopez suggests that it is reasonable to summarize the history of opinion polling (”which in the past had been dead wrong”) by its handful of egregious mistakes. Yes, of course, there have been some real stinkers: The most famous (at least among the established democracies with a tradition of political surveys) was surely the 1948 US election; the image of Harry Truman holding a copy of the Chicago Tribune, with its Dewey Defeats Truman headline, is almost iconic.

The most recent major event which surveys got “dead wrong” was the United Kingdom’s 1992 General Election, when all surveys pointed to a Labour victory over John Major’s Conservative Party. (The trend led to the Sun’s notorious Page One.)

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AS I did it before, I’ll do so again. In response to John’s yoeman’s job of posting the survey numbers, here’s my graphed version of the same thing, to visualize the trajectory of the leading candidates (you can look at Eleksyon 2007’s bar graphs, too, which strictly looks at results within the campaign period for the top 24 candidates and for the top 12, part 1 and part 2, in alaphabetical order):

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In the latest Pulse Asia survey, conducted between April 3 and 5, Chiz Escudero has outpaced Kiko Pangilinan and Ping Lacson, to tie for third place. Manny Villar is more firmly in second (more firmly, that is, than in the last SWS survey), while Loren Legarda has pulled away. She is now in the statistical stratosphere, with 60.8 percent of “representatives adults 18 years and older” saying they would vote for her.

It must be mentioned, however, that the same six candidates figure in the first six slots, except that there has been a rigodon in standings (Loren excepted). The same thing holds for the next six candidates: They appeared in the bottom half of the first 12 in the last Pulse Asia poll, but their positions have changed.

Note that Joker, despite an impressive barrage of TV and radio ads, has actually slipped, from 34.5 to 31.6. A pity, because I thought that his campaign commercials, especially the one for TV, were the best of the lot: They actually showed a candidate standing for something. (One of the ironies of the 2007 campaign: Joker’s ad actually makes the case against some of the Arroyo administration’s repressive policies — the calibrated preemptive response, for instance — while Chiz’s ads are generic; if we didn’t know any better, we would think the House Minority Leader was not even a member of the opposition! Of course, they are meant to be crossover ads, but more about that in a future post.)

Ed Angara has solidified his position; he seems to be going from strength to strength. The numbers are also more robust now for Gringo Honasan and Tito Sotto (which is bad news for good friend Koko Pimentel and John Osmena, both of the opposition).

Sonia now leads the charge of the within-striking-distance candidates: from 22.4 in the last Pulse Asia survey (itself a tripling in her numbers), she has now positively taken flight, at 30.5.

The chart incorporates the ratings from five Pulse Asia surveys, from July 2006.

HOLY Week marks the last period of rest and reflection the politicians, media, and the public will get until election day in May. Black Saturday marked the restarting up of the national campaign and the revving up of local campaigns, both of which are now running in tandem.

Last week, an editorial in the Inquirer expressed skepticism over the administration’s assertion that its machinery would sweep away all opposition. Today’s Inquirer editorial, in a sense, reiterates last week’s observation that the Palace is trying to condition the minds of the public for an administration sweep, but that the polls are disproving that effort at conditioning. A counter-push by administration spokesmen was kicked off to mark the resumption of the campaign, but as Amando Doronila points out, the damage has been done: the juggernaut’s a bit too creaky for comfort.

An interesting three part series began today, by Winston Marbella, discussing the changing nature of political campaigns in the country. Among his assertions is that an old kind of political culture has died, and a new one has taken its place; in a sense, politics has become more scientific. At the very least, it’s become more cost-effective for some, and a non-starter for others, because of how media-dominated elections have changed the political landscape. But what the landscape is, itself, is for other kinds of experts, such as sociologists, to discuss.

In a March 11 column, Randy David, our country’s most conspicuous sociologist,  I think situated the election itself best of all within the context of our changing society. I myself have tried to point out the difference between our old and new society, but I’m less optimistic than he about how different people really are, or how young people are poised to be a dynamic force. But I am as convinced as David that we’re in an in-between period, where the old ways are dying, and a new way is waiting to be born.