A glut of RP presidential wanna-bes

In the current Philippine presidential election there is plenty of controversy, not least over who should be running and who should be eliminated. Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin describes the initial furor over the surfeit of nominees.

HONG KONG (JP): At the moment the Philippines appears dedicated to demonstrating that politically it is the complete antithesis of Indonesia.

In Indonesia recently there was of course only one candidate, President Soeharto, in the presidential election. In the Philippines no less than 78 candidates nominated themselves at the beginning of the election campaign late February.

While in the Philippines fresh political controversies arise every day, in Indonesia, controversy was carefully avoided at the MPR in the cause of securing a smooth succession to Soeharto's seventh term in office.

In Indonesia only three political parties are recognized. While, once upon a time, the Philippines had a viable two-party system, today there are as many political parties as there are major candidates (see The Jakarta Post "Egos prevail in RP election" on March 2, 1998)

The glut of candidates for the top job has been the initial controversy of the campaign.

At least the Philippines Commission on Elections (COMELEC) has officially reduced the number of candidates allowed to run in the current presidential election campaign. But even after the reduction, the fundamental political flaw remains: it seems certain that the next president will only have minority support.

When nominations for the presidency closed last month no less than 78 would-be candidates had handed in their papers to the COMELEC.

Most of the 78 nominees are known only in either their professions or their localities. The fact that all of them wanted to run threatened to reduce the election to a farce.

In addition, there were 21 nominees for vice-president and no less than 179 candidates for twelve places in the powerful Philippine upper house, the Senate. Senators are elected in the nation at large, rather than in a regional constituency.

In the last presidential election in 1992, there were originally 75 candidates but the COMELEC eventually managed to reduce the field to seven presidential and seven vice- presidential candidates.

So on this occasion COMELEC chairman Bernardo Pardo bravely announced that many of the 78 would be declared "nuisance candidates" and that he thought five presidential the maximum number of contestants if the country was to elect a majority president.

Howls of derision greeted this statement. Many would-be candidates denounced Pardo for infringing their human rights. Several candidates slapped writs on the COMELEC chairman claiming hefty damages for his disparagement of the candidacies.

While the five nominees named by Pardo were spared the ordeal, the rest of the would-be candidates were required to attend COMELEC hearings to prove that they were not a nuisance and had the means to mount a credible campaign.

Needless to say, the hearings provided plenty of opportunities for the acts of political theater, or palabas, which many Filipinos seem to adore. As usual, Mrs. Imelda Marcos, who has been convicted, and sentenced to a long prison term on corruption charges, was well to the fore playing the palabas game to the hilt.

Clearly, in view of the furor, COMELEC had to compromise and so on March 11 it issued a 29-page resolution which reduced the field somewhat but not as much as Pardo had originally hoped.

The resolution gave due course to eleven presidential, nine vice-presidential and 40 senatorial candidates. What this means in effect is that all the political "heavyweights" -- those personalities with a legitimate claim to be known nationally -- will be allowed to run for the presidency as official candidates.

But the COMELEC resolution also means that 67 candidates for president, twelve for vice president, and no less than 139 would- be Senators are now classified as "nuisances".

Whether the 67 nominees for president (let alone the others) who are thus implicitly declared to be "nuisance" candidates will take their dismissal from the contest lying down must be doubted.

A further rain of writs is likely to descend on Pardo. This is especially so since one COMELEC commissioner cast an eloquent dissenting opinion against the COMELEC majority, arguing that one day he hoped COMELEC would recognize the right of every Filipino to present himself/herself as candidates.

"To me," the dissenting commissioner Manolo Gorospe said, "there is no such things as nuisance candidates. This the figment of the imagination of some of our countrymen".

Gorospe's opinions are likely to resonate in Philippine law courts between now and election day, and even thereafter.

But with the eleven "official" candidates now set to run, and with political parties taking a backseat to personality politics, a minority president seems certain, probably with less than a quarter of the vote.

Even Mrs. Marcos has not been declared a nuisance candidate. She has appealed to the Supreme Court against the confirmation of her conviction by the Supreme Court, and will only be disqualified if the Supreme Court hurries to uphold its earlier ruling before election day.

Since the Supreme Court took nearly five years to initially ratify Mrs. Marcos' conviction, it appears highly unlikely that final judgment will be rendered before May 11. Some Filipinos, aware of the former First Lady's undoubted skills in the realm of palabas politics, dread the thought of her going off to prison in the middle of the campaign.

But Mrs. Marcos well illustrates the political dangers of too many candidates. In 1992, Mrs. Marcos ran and won two million votes. Had she been allied with another former leading member of the Marcos faction, wealthy businessman Eduardo Cojuanco, who also ran and won even more votes than she did, together they would have easily defeated President Fidel Ramos.

The election on May 11 looks like being another chapter in the story of multi-candidate democracy in the Philippines. But political analysts are watching to see if any of the eleven nominees radically improve their chances by forming alliances with those who know they are going to lose -- and are willing (for a political price) to withdraw from the race.

Window: Most of the 78 nominees are known only in either their professions or their localities. The fact that all of them wanted to run threatened to reduce the election to a farce.