RP election billed 'the greatest show on earth'

RP election billed 'the greatest show on earth'

By Jamil Maidan Flores

JAKARTA (JP): An estimated 23 to 27 million of the 34 million
registered Filipino voters -- nearly half the entire population
of the Philippines -- will flock tomorrow to more than 174,000
voting precincts to elect a president, a vice president, 12
senators, 206 members of congress, 77 provincial governors and
hundreds of other provincial officials, and 1,608 mayors and
thousands of other city and municipal officials.

A Philippine election ballot has space for at least two dozen
elective positions and it is never easy to completely fill out.

Most voters consult a list or a sample ballot. Others just
write down the names of a few favorites. When the precincts close
later in the day, the counting of votes, involving hundreds of
names on each of the 174,000 tally boards, is an ordeal.

But Filipinos love that ordeal.

In fact, the greatest irritation to the Filipino psyche during
the martial law regime of the 1970s was that for about half a
dozen years, there were no elections.

It is as if Filipinos were deprived of the most important
things in life: bread and circuses.

The international media has focused on the presidential and
vice presidential races.

The fate of the nation may well depend on the quality of the
president and national legislators to be elected.

But it is on the local contest that field campaigners and
voters pour their passion.

President Ramos and presidential candidate Joseph Estrada both
claim to have been marked for assassination.

Much more likely targets are local candidates and their ward
leaders. And when the guns roar, it is hardly ever for a
political cause but a personal rivalry.

The latest opinion polls show opposition presidential
candidate Joseph Estrada leading the field by the proverbial
mile, grabbing 33 percent, with the remaining votes shared more
or less evenly among President Ramos-anointed Jose de Venecia,
the Catholic candidate Alfredo Lim, the highly regarded
legislator Raul Roco, and countryside development advocate Emilio
Osmena.

Close behind them is firebrand Senator Miriam Defensor
Santiago whose popularity has been eroded by a merciless campaign
to impugn her sanity, and after her, former defense secretary
Renato de Villa.

Former First Lady Imelda R. Marcos may still be on the
official list of candidates in spite of her highly dramatized
withdrawal but she straggles along with former defense minister
Juan Ponce Enrile, moral revivalist Manuel Morato and former
bureaucrat Santiago Dumlao.

The supporters of Estrada are saying: "It's all over but the
shouting."

More correct is the popular adage in boxing: "It isn't over
until it's over."

There are enough imponderables that could still bring about a
titanic upset. The undecided vote is still close enough to 10
percent to make a difference. Theoretically, any candidate that
gets the bulk of that gets within striking distance.

There is a dark number of voters who change their mind at the
last moment, realizing that their earlier choice would not make
it anyway, and now opting for a more likely winner.

This is a simple change of mind and not to be confused with
the "bandwagon effect" which is now beginning to go the way of
Estrada.

Many local political leaders who control large blocks of votes
decide at the last possible minute. That is when deals are made
and big money changes hands.

Local warlords have been bruited to have changed sides while
the votes were already being counted. Warlords may be in their
twilight in the Philippines, but there are still enough of them
to complicate the political exercise.

That means cheating.

In presidential elections, there has always been cheating, but
seldom was it a swinging factor: a presidential candidate cheated
in one province could have people cheating for him in another, so
it about evens out. But in a close race involving four or five
front runners, it could be decisive.

President Ramos has given his word that he will not tolerate
cheating in the elections.

You can believe it. He has a chance to go down in history as
the best president the country has ever had, and he is not going
to jeopardize that by embarking on a dubious and possibly futile
adventure.

There will be cheating, of course, but purely local. And it
probably will not be a factor in the presidential and vice-
presidential races.

Yet, after considering all imponderables, the wise money says:
"Bet on Estrada!"

Joseph Estrada is the incumbent vice president, also a college
drop-out, a movie star who portrayed rugged characters
championing the oppressed, a former senator with a dismal record
of legislative work, a self-confessed womanizer and heavy drinker
who claims to have reformed.

The Catholic Church has campaigned against him because of the
vices he has confessed to, but the masses do not give a damn.

The business sector derides him for his ignorance of economics
and bruit that an Estrada presidency, like a bull in a china
shop, will shatter the economic reforms installed by Ramos. But
lately they have been muttering rather meekly that perhaps a
President Estrada will not be such a buffoon that he would
scuttle the economic policies of Ramos.

They deserve their humble pie: they were tentative in
supporting their early favorite, former defense secretary Renato
de Villa, and never acted to do justice to their conviction.

And yet the campaign has not been entirely bereft of political
and intellectual depth.

A contestant that shone too late is Raul Roco who is
concededly the best intellectually equipped for the presidency.

His record as a legislator dazzles when compared to that of
Estrada, being responsible for many of the economic reforms of
recent years, including a new Central Bank Law that probably
saved the peso from plunging in the current Asian crisis.

If voting were based on a candidate's grasp of issues, he
would win hands down. But he is neither populist nor popular and
seems to have become permanent resident of the fourth place in
opinion polls.

How Roco fares in the election will serve as a barometer to
the maturity of the Filipino voter. It will be a refreshing and
heartening surprise if he gets a losing 20 percent of the vote.

Philippine elections have been facetiously billed as The
Greatest Show on Earth, after the Hollywood movie on circus life.

It well may be that it is a gruesomely flawed process,
rendered senseless with frivolity, irrelevance, corruption and
violence.

But it is the only thing that works for Filipinos who like to
believe that they are rugged individuals, much like the
characters portrayed by movie actor Estrada, who can make a
choice even if the choice is a potentially disastrous one.

The writer is an observer of Philippine politics.