Egos prevail in RP elections

President Fidel Ramos is nearing the end of the single term in office which is permitted under the constitution and already the three month election campaign to decide who shall succeed him has officially begun. The Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin analyses the plethora of candidates, and the certainty that the next president will be elected on a minority of the vote.

HONG KONG (JP): The late Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos ought to be turning in his grave, rejoicing in his achievement. As he demolished the old democratic set-up in the Philippines with his declaration of martial law in 1971, Marcos also set out to destroy the two-party system that went with it. Now, as the 1998 presidential election gets under way, it can be seen that Marcos succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

From 1935 until 1971, politics were dominated by the two political parties -- the Nacionalista and the Liberal Party. The two parties more closely resembled the loose party structure in the United States between Democrats and Republicans rather than the more tightly organized parties known in parliamentary democracies. Nevertheless the two parties did impose a certain discipline, and they were a forum within which Philippine politicians resolved their differences and compromised their interests.

As a noteworthy Rand Corporation report on democracy in the Philippines, published not long before the martial law declaration, correctly detailed, the system had its flaws, but it did work well in its essentially Filipino way, and much better than many foreigners and Filipinos usually recognized.

All presidents from 1935 until 1969 came from one or other of the two parties, and none were ever re-elected to a second four- year term. Both parties would always chose a ticket that straddled the archipelago's geographic diversity (as with Marcos coming from the northern Ilocos provinces, his vice president Fernando Lopez coming from the Western Visayas plus Mrs Imelda Marcos coming from the Eastern Visayas).

Independent candidates for president were rare, and seldom made inroads into what were effectively straight fights between two party tickets. Odd individuals did occasionally put themselves forward but that, too, was relatively rare.

Marcos -- who had switched parties in 1964 in order to get a nomination -- sought through martial law to destroy healthy debate so naturally he banned the two parties which had generated it. Marcos sought to arouse political fear and political sycophancy behind one all-embracing "movement" extolling the New Society which he sought (but failed) to create.

Marcos was initially successful on both counts but he was putting Filipinos into a straight jacket which ultimately did not fit them. Needless to say, the party did not outlive its creator, although Mrs. Marcos is using its name to make her run for the presidency this year. But the Philippine political elite seemingly reacted against the Marcos attempt to change their contentious nature not by returning to the previous two-party system, which had served them reasonably well, but by going to the opposite extreme.

Once the Liberal and Nacionalista parties had curbed the excesses of factionalism. Once Marcos was overthrown by a brief but glorious moment of national unity, the political reflex has been to give factionalism full rein. Straight fights for the presidency became a distant memory. Against numerous candidates in the last presidential election, Ramos won with a mere 22 percent of the vote. Against the far greater plethora of candidates who have put themselves forward on this occasion, Ramos' successor may well enter Malacanang presidential place with an even smaller percentage.

The widely reported figure is 83 presidential candidates. But most Philippine newspapers have had their own calculation ranging from 66 on upwards. The one newspaper to print a list of the non- serious "presidentiables" had 35 names plus the nine or ten "serious" candidates. No doubt the precise number of those filing their nominations with the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) will eventually emerge.

Mercifully, in view of the plethora, COMELEC has the power to declare would-be nominees to be "nuisance candidates". COMELEC chairman Bernardo Pardo told the Manila Bulletin that those who are found to be making a mockery of the electoral process and have no capability to wage a credible campaign will be declared nuisance candidates. One does not envy Chairman Pardo having to decide who is a nuisance and who is not -- the only certainty is that COMELEC will almost certainly be faced with numerous writs in the law courts, filed by those who resent being called a nuisance.

But even if the field were limited to the nine or ten candidate politicians who are normally dubbed "political heavyweights" it would still be a far cry from the pre-martial law contests. Factionalism, and the inflated egos which go with it, is clearly in the ascendant. The so-called "political parties" have lost all ability to reconcile differences within the political elite.

Instead they exemplify and accentuate them. Thus Fidel Ramos himself -- not the "party" members -- chose the candidate to stand for president on behalf of his faction, House Speaker Jose De Venecia. But former Defense Secretary and close Ramos colleague, Renato De Villa, who had been stomping around the archipelago letting people know he was running for at least eight months, could not accept Ramos' choice.

So he first signed a compact of cooperation with Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim. A De Villa-Lim ticket would have been a potentially powerful team -- but they, in turn, could not agree on who should be the presidential candidate, heading the ticket. The result is that De Villa is running for president representing his faction, while Lim runs on behalf of his, named the "Liberal Party" but shorn of the old, broader Liberal Party substance.

Since the politicians cannot compose their differences, the system could be devised to let the voters do the reconciling -- through the device of run-off elections. The trouble would be that there are so many candidates, several run-offs would be required, making electing a president in the Philippines an excessively expensive business.

So the problem remains that the sheer number of candidates is self-fulfilling: precisely because there are so many candidates dividing the vote, it becomes possible to dream that a relatively small percentage of the vote will enable a factional ticket of two well-known personalities to win.

Thus it is extremely unlikely that Mrs. Imelda Marcos will win. If her appeal against conviction for corruption is rejected by the Supreme Court before the election, then she will be disqualified and start serving her 12-year prison sentence. Last time, in 1992, Mrs. Marcos managed to garner around two million votes, which left her way behind Ramos. The same two million votes will be more valuable amidst 83 or 66 or even nine candidates. Mrs. Marcos may well be waiting for an offer which includes a future presidential pardon.

Thus, too, the crush of candidates makes it possible for feisty Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago to hope that she can repeat her 1992 performance when she ran Ramos very close -- and indeed may only have lost as a result of some fast post-election footwork among the ballot boxes, a sport at which Filipinos are almost certainly the world champions. Immediately, Mrs. Santiago's main worry is to bring a writ against two other candidates. They are a nuisance to her because they are also named Santiago.

Mrs. Defensor-Santiago has teamed up with former journalist Senator Francisco Tatad as her vice-president. Tatad assures the electorate that the Santiago-Tatad team means they need not vote for NOTA. But a vote for NOTA -- None Of The Above -- is precisely what the influential Catholics Bishops Conference of the Philippines recently recommended at the start of the campaign. Amidst the surfeit of egos and candidates, the Bishops found that none as yet met their criteria for competence, personal integrity and moral uprightness, and commitment to the common good.

Window: Thus Fidel Ramos himself -- not the "party" members -- chose the candidate to stand for president on behalf of his faction, House Speaker Jose De Venecia.