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.