LuisTeodoro.com

A specter is haunting Philippine politics: the specter of a Fernando Poe Jr. candidacy. Ex-presidents and civil society leaders, academics and editorial writers, businessmen and high level professionals—but most of all the politicians who have their own candidates for the Presidency—have greeted that possibility with a grand chorus of denunciation.

The only ones who seem unfazed are two of the candidates themselves: former senator and secretary of education Raul Roco, and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Roco reacted to the possibility of a Poe candidacy with a shrug, and said that the more candidates the better for Filipinos, implying thereby that more candidates mean more choices.

On the other hand, Mrs. Arroyo’s spokesman said Mrs. Arroyo was not at all bothered, and had long anticipated the possibility of Poe’s running. Mrs. Arroyo, in any case, has been campaigning for two years, and is the incumbent besides, giving her an edge difficult for even the aging King of Philippine Movies to beat.

But for the rest, the imminence of Poe’s announcing his candidacy has triggered a flurry of hand-wringing, imagined disasters, lamentations of near-Biblical proportions, outright insults, patronizing comments, and suggestions that Poe would be no more than a puppet on somebody’s string if elected.

All these even before he has officially declared himself a candidate. Although it now seems certain that Poe will yield to those elements in the political opposition who see a Poe candidacy as their only way back to power, Poe himself has not said much except that he will decide soon. Certainly he has not commented on his own fitness for the Presidency. Given his still hypothetical candidacy, he has not said anything about what his platform, if any, will be.

The near-universal lament in that sector of Philippine society that regards itself as its thinking component is Poe’s alleged ignorance. Its mantra is that it’s difficult to govern a country. As former President Fidel Ramos was saying late this week, “Governance is not a simple matter.”

One does not learn how to run a country through acting in the movies, said Ramos, and “one does not acquire the ability to govern six months after declaring that he is running.”

Poe could win the elections, echoed Senator Robert Barbers, a known aspirant for the vice presidency, but whether he could govern is another matter altogether.

“Following a movie script with special camera effects is different from the true slice of life (?) where poverty will lead a person to commit a crime,” Barbers said. “We are facing a crisis that needs decisions that will not please the majority of more than 80 million Filipinos.”

Barbers and Ramos, former military men both, are of course right, despite their patronizing tone, and their assumption that policemen and generals are brighter than actors. Governance is difficult, and there is a crisis—economic, political, social—in the Philippines. It’s been there for at least three centuries. But that they’re right about these does not mean they’re right about their support for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, given that she doesn’t seem to have done much to address the crisis during the last two years, which puts in doubt her capacity to do so after 2004.

It is also more than probable that most Filipinos are aware of the crisis and of the need to do something about it. After all, it’s they who have to live in the grinding poverty, violence and general misery the crisis has created, they who must confront its reality daily.

Given that awareness, however, do the majority who’re poor and powerless know who can address the crisis? The “thinking sector” doesn’t think so. Despite its loud proclamations of democratic commitment, it can’t hide its contempt for the majority of Filipinos who, over the last ten years or so, have elected comedians, broadcast talking heads, and actors to the country’s highest positions including the Presidency.

What this sector misses is the possibility that having tried these creatures after years of getting burned by voting for learned lawyers like Ferdinand Marcos, the electorate has learned enough not to repeat its mistakes.

Poe the candidate is thus not as popular as is widely assumed. A September 2003 Social Weather Stations survey found that if elections for President were held that month, Senator and broadcaster Noli de Castro would win, with 28 percent of the electorate voting for him, followed by Raul Roco, 20 percent, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, 17 percent.

Fernando Poe Jr. would come in fourth, behind Mrs. Arroyo, with only 14 percent of the vote, followed by Panfilo Lacson, 10 percent, Gregorio Honasan six percent, and Teofisto Guingona, two percent. Only four percent were undecided or did not answer.

One editorial writer nevertheless assumed yesterday that Poe will win hands down. He also included the country’s being embarrassed before the rest of the world among the reasons why a Poe Presidency would be such a disaster for the country. The Philippines is not only already shamed by the inefficiency of its police and the performance of its economy. It should also be ashamed of the way the majority decides, which is tantamount to being ashamed of the way it practices democracy.

There has to be a better way of reacting to the possibility of a Poe candidacy other than through fear of what other countries will say, and unproven assumptions that don’t help improve the quality of political discourse. True, Estrada was an embarrassment, and so would another actor-President be, to the rest of the world. But Estrada was not driven from office because Filipinos were embarrassed. It was because they were sick of his government’s inefficiency and corruption.

Poe is a school drop-out and has not had the benefits—if you can still call it that in this country—of formal education. That doesn’t mean he’s ignorant. The country has not lacked for degree-less people who’re well informed and who have turned out well, anyway—or for be-degreed people who’ve turned out badly.

If a degree were so critical to public service, why is the government the way it is, and why is the country still in crisis? Remember that Mrs. Arroyo has a doctorate in economics which doesn’t seem to have helped her much. And most of our politicians’ being so thoroughly trained in the country’s leading law schools has not made them any more law-abiding than an unschooled cell-phone snatcher.

Poe could of course be as ignorant as people assume him to be, and therefore easily manipulated by the power brokers and operators that infest Philippine politics. His pal Erap, for example, may very likely have assumed that only a Poe presidency can free him from detention and the plunder charges he’s still facing. And there are those other Estrada camp-followers, not to mention the denizens of the movie world who’re likely to think, once Poe’s in Malacanang, that as in Estrada’s days all the Philippines is now their oyster.

But this is to get ahead of ourselves. The fear of a Poe candidacy is based on the assumption that he’ll win come 2004, especially if Loren Legarda teams up with him for the vice presidency. The surveys suggest that it’s at least not certain, and that one candidate, Mrs. Arroyo, has the formidable advantage of incumbency –and US support–behind her.

The critical question is whether Poe, once he declares his candidacy, can prevail over Arroyo and Roco, and on election day win enough votes to make it to Malacanang. With Loren Legarda as his vice -president, the opposition groups supporting Poe claim, that would be a certainty, given Legarda’s popularity. And yet the 1998 elections revealed, among others, that the popularity of one is non-transferable to the other, as was evident in Estrada’s winning the Presidency, but his running mate Edgardo Angara’s losing the Vice Presidential contest.

If Poe does run, those sectors of Philippine society that fancy themselves as its “thinking” component should be able to argue against his candidacy on a better basis than his presumed ignorance—and for the sake of enlightened discourse this political season. They can demand that he publicly pledge non-interference in the Estrada plunder case, for example, and that he present a coherent and well-thought out platform of governance.

His failure to do either should be argument enough against a Poe Presidency. But the very bottom line is that, for all his fabled, but apparently declining appeal as a box-office star (some of his newer films have not done very well), Poe may not win in 2004, and all this fear and trembling could be as unfounded as believing in ghosts and goblins. Besides which, as Raul Roco says, shouldn’t electing a President be a case of the more choices, the better?

(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, October 25, 2003)

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