Ramos set to capitalize on Philippines elections
Ramos set to capitalize on Philippines elections
By Cecil Morella
MANILA (AFP): Philippine President Fidel Ramos' reform- oriented policies are expected to receive a boost in national elections next week, with most pollsters predicting a big win despite recent foreign policy and security setbacks.
More than 36 million Filipinos are expected to vote to elect 17,342 officials to the Senate, House of Representatives, and local executive posts from provincial governor down to town and city councillors.
But for Ramos, who has seen his leadership take a beating in the final weeks of the three-month campaign, the battleground will be in the Senate, where 12 of the 24 seats are at stake.
An opposition win would make him a lame duck president for the last three years of his term, but most polling groups are now predicting that the ruling coalition will capture at least seven and up to 10 of the crucial senate posts.
His allies hold a large majority in the House, which they expect to maintain. But Ramos has had to put up with an opposition-led Senate for the past three years, frustrating some of his key policy initiatives.
"A relatively calm, peaceful and fair election could provide the key that shall ignite the engine for the stock market's performance in the second half, " said research chief Francis Liboro of Belson Securities Inc. The market has seen a 12-percent decline in the first four months of the year.
For a time, though, the Ramos ticket appeared to waver amid national anger over Manila's failure to save convicted Filipina murderer Flor Contemplacion from the gallows in Singapore in March.
That sentiment was exacerbated by the government's failure to anticipate a bloody Moslem guerrilla raid in the south early last month.
However, Julius Caesar Parrenas of the private think-tank Institute for International and Strategic Studies told AFP that after several weeks of hysteria, the hanging has ceased to be a factor in the vote.
"A significant victory of (his) senatorial candidates will certainly help President Ramos push more aggressively the remaining tasks of liberalization, deregulation and privatization," said Bernardo Villegas, vice president of the conservative Center for Research and Communication.
The former general's move to break up entrenched monopolies in the telecommunications, shipping and energy sectors and his opening up of the banking industry to foreign entities are being seen as the foundations of a reviving economy, which grew by 5.1 percent last year.
These "elections should be considered as a referendum for the Ramos administration," the president said Wednesday.
At stake are "the continued economic momentum of the Philippines" and the "fulfillment of the social reform agenda," he added.
On top are tax reform bills, designed to address recurring deficits.
Tax reform is a sore point in Manila's discussions with major lenders and aid donors, including the International Monetary Fund and the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund of Japan.
The Ramos ticket is a marriage of convenience with an opposition party that had controlled the senate, and includes the president's family planning advocate, Juan Flavier, as well as staunch anti-birth control campaigner Francisco Tatad.
But University of the Philippines political science professor Alex Magno argued that Filipinos "have rarely voted on the basis of the macroeconomic figures" or party affiliation.
"They will vote for personalities they feel they can trust, or they will choose candidates on the basis of perceived individual competence," he added.
About 30 people have been slain in campaign violence, including an incumbent congressman and a candidate for provincial governor.
Winners for local posts should be known within days based on the past record of Manila's antiquated manual canvassing system, but it took officials more than a month to proclaim the winners of senatorial contests in 1987 and 1992.