The Long View
Opportunities hidden in the numbers

By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:06:00 02/08/2010

YESTERDAY this paper reported there are 50, 723, 734 voters registered for the May 10 elections. These voters will be organized into 329, 389 voting precincts organized further into 75,471 clustered precincts in 37,226 voting centers.

The Comelec expects a relatively high voter turnout—80 percent or 40.5 million voters. If we use the income classes advertisers and pollsters use, this translates to: 4,057,898 voters from Classes ABC (10 percent of voters); 30, 434, 240 from Class D (75 percent); 6, 086, 848 from Class E (15 percent).

What could this mean in actual votes?

Without fussing with margins of error, the January surveys put Aquino anywhere from 36 percent (Standard), 37 percent (Pulse), 42 percent (SWS); Villar—35 percent (SWS, Pulse), 36 percent (Standard); Estrada—2 percent (Pulse), 13 percent (Standard, SWS); Teodoro—4 percent (SWS), 5 percent (Standard, Pulse); Villanueva—2 (all); Gordon—1 (Pulse, Standard), 2 (SWS); Madrigal—0.4 (SWS), 0.5 (Pulse), 1 (Standard); De los Reyes—0.2 (SWS) 0.3 (Pulse), 05 (Standard); Perlas—0.05 (Pulse) 0.1 (SWS), 0.3 (Standard).

SWS puts the undecided at 2 percent or 811, 579.744 voters, Standard says it’s 5 percent or 2,028,949 voters, and Pulse, 6 percent or 2,434,739.

Pulse has the freshest numbers. If honest elections had been held on Jan. 22-26, the results could have been: Aquino—15,014,225 votes; Villar—14,202,645; Estrada—4,869,478; Teodoro—2,028,949; Villanueva—811,579; Gordon—405,789; Madrigal—202,894; De los Reyes—121,736; Perlas—20,289; and nuisance candidate Acosta of the KBL—81,157.

Put another way, had the election taken place on the survey dates, over a million votes would have separated frontrunner Aquino from his leading contender Villar.

SWS (Jan. 21-24) has Aquino at 42 percent and Villar at 35 percent, a seven-point difference that translates into a lead of 2,840,529 votes. If the difference is actually 5 percent, the lower end of the margin of error, that’s an Aquino lead of 2,028,949; if it’s 9 percent, the maximum end of the margin of error, that’s an Aquino lead of 3,652,108.

The most recent Pulse Asia poll (Jan. 22-26) puts Aquino ahead of Villar by 2 percent. (With a different base and methods, the Manila Standard Today survey has the same number.) Much has been made of this statistical dead heat, though it actually means—factoring in the margin of error—that the two leading candidates are anywhere from being tied to 2-4 percent apart. So 2 percent of the expected turnout is a 811,579-vote lead for Aquino or the two could be exactly tied; at four percent, Aquino’s lead could be as high as 1,623,159.

In terms of socioeconomic classes, Pulse has Aquino leading Villar (37-22) among ABC; that’s 15 percent of that class or a 608,684-lead in votes. Aquino also leads Villar in Class D (40-34), so that’s a 6-percent lead, meaning, 1,826,054 votes more than Villar; while Villar leads Aquino in Class E (39-31) which means a 9-point lead for Villar or 486,947 votes over Aquino.

This all presumes that if 80 percent do vote, all their votes will be counted, not only properly but also expeditiously.

The problem, of course—in the immortal words of President Macapagal-Arroyo, who moved heaven, earth and Garci to ensure she had a lead of 1 million votes in 2004—is, “’yung dagdag, ’yung dagdag.” Plus, as her subordinates might put it, “yung bawas, yung bawas.” There are many ways to do this without even padding or shaving votes once cast.

In the mock polls (a simulation of the voting, counting of votes and transmission of results) over the weekend (involving 50 voters per precinct in a total of nine precincts in Quezon City, Taguig, Baguio, Cebu and Davao), the Comelec proclaimed there was no problem in the counting and transmission.

Overlooked was, considering the tiny numbers participating, the relatively high number of votes that weren’t accepted for counting. In Quezon City, only 46 out of 50 ballots were counted. (Four were rejected, apparently for “improper shading.”) In Taguig, the machine also refused to accept three ballots. Four out of 50 is 8 percent; so let us assume this is a reasonable number of spoiled/invalid ballots to expect from people not following directions. That’s 3,246,318 votes out of the immediate counting and canvassing.

The Comelec earlier put much higher the percentage of voters who might have problems because of the machines—30 percent, which means it’s preparing for manual counting for 6,086,848 votes.

In either case, if human error alone might put 3.2 million-6 million votes in a grey area (thus requiring further scrutiny and manual counting, with each ballot bogged down in examinations and arguments), then neither of the two leading contenders in a close race could be proclaimed.

As the formal campaign begins tomorrow, Aquino’s lead, while still formidable, gives (a false, I think) impression of being smaller than it actually is when translated into percentages. Villar’s catching up in terms of percentages still has a long way to go when seen in terms of actual votes. On the other hand, neither side can rest easily because neither has a comfortable enough percentage to make them immune to the administration’s ace in the hole.

And what’s the administration’s ace in the hole? It can deny either of the leading contenders victory—unless. Which may be why Gary Olivar has thanked Villar for not hitting GMA; why Press Secretary Jun Icban said that there’s no GMA “kiss of death” despite talk she’s in league with Villar. The enemy of my enemy, the Palace broadly hints, will be my friend.

Notes:

Here is Social Weather Stations’ Jan. 21-24 report in full; here is Pulse Asia’s Jan. 22-26  report. Mon Casiple has an analysis, while Marocharim Experiment has a generation-specific reflection. For background reading, see PCIJ’s report, Jeckyll-and-Hyde Campaign; John Nery’s The 2010 race is set and  my entry,We, the People: How Candidates view The People as Electors, my columns Brains without bodies (2) and Back to the Future, and Pulse Asia’s February 2009 Survey on the May 2010 Elections: The Undecided in Alphanumeric.

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In general the surveys break down our population into six age groups: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 and those 65 and above. The surveys tell us (for the purposes of this piece I’ll just focus on the most recent Pulse Asia Jan. 22-26 findings) that between the two leading contenders, Benigno Aquino III is strongest among the 18-24 and 45-54 age brackets (9-point leads, respectively), 55-64 (10-point lead) and 65 and up (a 19-point lead!) age groups. Manny Villar is strong in the 25-34 (10 points) and 35-44 (4 points) age groups.

On one hand, voters with the greatest life experience (if you’re 65 you were born after the war ended in 1945, so your memories go as far back as the Quirino years, probably), or who are contemporaries of the two leading candidates (Aquino falls within the 45-54 bracket, Villar falls within the 55-54 bracket) and those with the least life experience (if you’re 18 now, and thus a first-time voter, you were born in 1992) all seem to have a similar perspective in that they are generally for Aquino. Villar’s constituency, age-wise, seems to be those currently just starting to climb the corporate ladder or who are in middle management [or of OFW age]. Villar’s constituency happens to be the most numerous portion of the population. [See this chart a friend prepared containing age groups and significant dates that molded the attitudes of particular generations].

I have had the chance to give talks to groups of university students lately. Belonging to the 18-24 age group, they comprise 14 percent of the voting population. They are at the tail end of what I believe will come to be known as the Arroyo babies, just as my generation is known as the martial law babies (born during the earlier part of the Marcos administration, 8 to 17 years old when Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, and 11 to 20 years old during Edsa in 1986).

There are the Edsa babies, born from 1977 to 1986, the oldest of whom were in primary school when Ninoy was shot, or in primary school when Cory Aquino left office. Politically, they came of age in the presidential elections of 1998 or 2004.

The Arroyo babies are those who have come of age in time for this election and are first-time voters, as well as those who came of age, politically speaking, in the aftermath of Edsa Dos, and voted for the first time in 2004. That is, those who are 18 to 31 years of age. The oldest were around 22, seniors or fresh graduates, when Edsa Dos took place. Perhaps they felt the disappointment of the post-Edsa Dos years (and the panic of Edsa Tres) most keenly—they didn’t go out into the streets during “Hello, Garci” or NBN-ZTE scandals. The middle includes those who were college freshmen during “Hello, Garci,” and who are 22 years old today, fresh graduates who may not have participated in rallies during “Hello, Garci” but who expressed indignation over the NBN-ZTE hearings.

This is a generation, then, that is basically aware of only two presidents: Estrada and Arroyo. Of this generation, a McCann study in 2007 said: “Teens are watching less TV, listening to less radio, reading less books and magazines, are doing less sports, interacting with friends face-to-face less frequently, and spending less money on traditional consumer items…. thanks to virtual connectivity technology like text messaging and the Internet.”

This doesn’t seem to be a generation that can be swayed one way or another by mass media, in that they probably pay attention to the news only in times of natural disaster but without keeping tabs on political developments. They are, however, a generation that may be swayed, particularly effectively, by advertising because when they do watch TV, the ads can touch them, particularly during prime time.

Manuel Villar, for example, during the whole of 2009 and in the first week of January, poured a tremendous amount of resources into ads targeted specifically at those 18 years old and above, belonging to the socio-economic bracket D and E. In 2009, he had 4,710 TV ads, of which 3,944 were 30-seconders. In the first week of January alone, he had 296 spots. More than half of the ads during both periods were broadcast during prime time, meaning more than 90 percent of viewers got to see his ads at least once a day and those seeing his ads twice or thrice a day in the high 80s.

Of course, saturating the airwaves cost a pretty penny: a conservative estimate puts Villar’s 2009 spending at P640 million, and during the first week of January at about P70 million or P240 million for the whole month (Teodoro, by one estimate spent P29.5 million, and Aquino P7.8 million).

What is equally important is that the Villar ads have not only been relentless, but methodical. And they are working. In a month, Pulse Asia reports that Aquino has gone down 8 points, Villar increased by 12, Estrada lost 7, while the other candidates remain basically unchanged with negligible levels of voter support.

At this point, the two leading contenders are now neck-and-neck going into the official starting line of the campaign. Since every election is about the future, the question then becomes, which of the two leading contenders can lay claim to the first-time voters, the Arroyo babies.

Let me close with two opinions from this age group. One who belongs to the older range of the spectrum puts it this way: “Erap was tried and found guilty, hence his current standing. We tolerated Gloria because nothing has been proven. Hence, same with Villar: nothing has been proven, and he says he cares for the poor, so, vote for him.” Another, more in the middle of this age group, says, “The numbers say that we have resigned and accepted corruption as a fact of life since we became very politically aware in Edsa Dos.”

But as for the tail enders, the first-time voters, their views are the most surprising of all. They are the least touched by the question of ethics as a factor in electing public officials.

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The Long View
Cabral’s crackdown

By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:43:00 02/01/2010

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(January 30, 2010 issue)

The Defiant Era

Forty years ago, the First Quarter Storm rocked Manila, which had not seen anarchy on this scale since the Pacific War. A look back at the movement, where it failed and where it succeeded

By Manuel L. Quezon III

THE thrilling thing about the year…was that it was a time when significant segments of population all over the globe refused to be silent about the many things that were wrong with the world….And this gave the world a sense of hope that it has rarely had, a sense that where there is wrong, there are always people who will expose it and try to change it.”

That was Mark Kurlansky writing in his marvelous book 1968: The Year That Rocked the World. From Cuba to China to Czechoslovakia, France, Mexico, Poland and the United States, young people began to rebel against the establishment. Kurlansky believes the postwar generation was prepared to do so, ironically because of the relative security and comfort they enjoyed and their having been born after the privations and traumas of World War II. And so young people in communist countries challenged party dictatorship while their counterparts in the democratic world turned leftward to challenge the bourgeois certainties of their elders, for it was in that year, too, here in the Philippines, that an elite family celebrated a wedding anniversary with heedless ostentation.

Filipinos born after the war, who had no memory of that period or the succeeding era of the Huks, came to share the restlessness and iconoclasm of their counterparts around the world: students demonstrated against the Vietnam War (it was the year of the T?t Offensive), and for social reforms in the Catholic Church and in the schools.

In that year, Sen. Benigno S. Aquino Jr. published a commentary in the American publication Foreign Affairs, describing the country as “a land consecrated to democracy but run by an entrenched plutocracy. Here, too, are a people whose ambitions run high, but whose fulfillment is low and mainly restricted to the self-perpetuating élite. Here is a land of privilege and rank—a republic dedicated to equality but mired in an archaic system of caste.” Aquino was writing in response to the massacre of Lapiang Malaya ralliers on May 21, 1967. Democracy had survived the Huk rebellion; and yet, even the beneficiaries of the relative stability of the mid-Fifties to mid-Sixties left an increasingly better-educated and cosmopolitan urban middle class in discontent.

The First Quarter Storm came two years after the rest of the world was convulsed by student rebellions in 1968. By all accounts, 1969 was the year in which protesting in the style of the civil rights movement in the United States—peaceful, nonviolent, reformist—gave way to more militant protests and bluntly revolutionary aspirations among the youth, along with the flag hoisted with the red field up.

Ferdinand Marcos won an unprecedented full second term as president toward the end of that year. In those days, when presidential terms began on December 30, a newly elected president delivered his annual State of the Nation at the opening of Congress in January. In 1970, that address to Congress was scheduled on a Monday, January 26. A mere four weeks had passed since Marcos’s inaugural as the [Third] Republic’s first reelected president.

Recalling the era for The Philippine Century, an anthology of writings published in the Free Press, veteran journalist Dan Mariano writes: “Outside the Legislative Building, hundreds of moderate student activists were demonstrating to urge the government to call a constitutional convention.” Jose F. Lacaba, in “The January 26 Confrontation: A Highly Personal Account,” the first of his articles on the First Quarter Storm for this magazine, writes that student leader Edgar Jopson, who was then a moderate, had his group’s microphones kept away from radical student leader Gary Olivar, and the radicals wrangled with the moderates just as Marcos had finished his speech and was stepping out of the Legislative Building.

It was then, Mariano’s account continues, that “a papier-mâché crocodile (representing government corruption) and a makeshift coffin (symbolizing the death of democracy) flew” in the direction of Marcos and his wife, Imelda. “Security aides quickly hustled Marcos into his waiting limousine and sped away from the angry mob. Moments later, Manila police armed with truncheons and rattan shields attacked the student demonstrators who fought back with empty soft-drink bottles, rocks and the wooden frames of their placards.”

The moderates tried to pacify by means of speeches the radicals, among them the Maoist Kabataang Makabayan. But the radicals, as Lacaba reports, were “spoiling for trouble” with the cops and were “in no mood for dinner-party chatter and elocution contests.”

From the battleground that was the vicinity of the Legislative Building on Burgos Drive, the demonstrations that now launched the First Quarter Storm moved on to the premises of Malacañang, after a relative lull of three days in which student groups still took to the streets to denounce the government. Then came Friday, January 30—“so far the most violent night in the city’s postwar history,” as Lacaba writes in retrospect about these events.

The radicals were demonstrating again in front of the Legislative Building, as the moderates went to Malacañan for an audience with Marcos that turned into a tense confrontation. By the end of that meeting, the radicals had trooped as well to the Palace. As Lacaba reports in “And the January 30 Insurrection,” “[w]hat specific event precipitated the battle that spread out to other parts of the city, and lasted till dawn the next day, may never be known. The students who came from Congress claim that, as they were approaching J. P. Laurel Street, they heard something that sounded like firecrackers going off. When they got to Malacañang, the crowd was getting to be unruly. It was growing dark, and the lamps on the Malacañang gates had not been turned on. There was a shout of ‘Sindihan ang ilaw! Sindihan ang ilaw!’ Malacañang obliged, the lights went on, and then crash! a rock blasted out one of the lamps. One by one, the lights were put out by stones or sticks.”

Firefighters arrived at the scene, literally to extinguish the political conflagration at the Palace gates, but the hose they aimed at the protesters yielded a “sputtering spurt,” then the comical became tragic as the protesters ran after and roughed up the fleeing firefighters, then rammed the fire truck into Malacañang’s Mendiola gate. The very center of power suddenly became a tear-gassed arena, as the presidential guards at once engaged the protesters who were lobbing Molotov cocktails into the Palace grounds.

Amid the blaze of a parked vehicle that had been set on fire, the presidential guards managed to drive out the mob, and the battle shifted again to downtown Manila where, this time, not just cops, but “constabulary troopers” confronted the protesters, reports Lacaba. There were also looters among this defiant crowd, who exploited the situation, smashing shop windows and spiriting away “jewelry and shoes.” Soon enough, “the soldiers started firing with Thompsons into the ground,” the dreadful staccato intended as warning, and yet some protesters were hit by shrapnel. Lacaba himself became caught up in the frenzy of rushing some of the injured to the nearby hospitals, and it is remarkable, going by his account, that not a few residents in the area helped hide the protesters who, fleeing from their pursuers, had wandered into the maze of Manila’s dark alleys.

By dawn, the revolution of January 30 was quite over, hundreds had been arrested and an eerie, smoke-filled silence was restored in the city. But this was just the beginning of the Storm. Marcos did not immediately issue his infamous dire warnings—his threats to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and declare martial law. He still maintained that air of equanimity, as opposed to the spitefulness attributed to him since. Nevertheless this period became his transition to authoritarianism. Vice President Fernando Lopez resigned from the Cabinet the next day.

These events were chronicled by the Free Press writers in what has since been widely acclaimed as “literature in a hurry.” Lacaba’s articles for this magazine and Asia-Philippines Leader remain in print in a book titled Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage: The First Quarter Storm and Related Events, which harks back to a time when protesting in front of the US Embassy was daringly new and not the ossified ritual that such actions became since; when communism and socialism were daring new thought and not bogged down in debates over whether they’re old cant; when the established social order was besieged and a generation of Filipinos thought it was possible to push it to the wall so that it would either reform or suffer destruction through revolution.

In contrast to Lacaba’s reportage, Kerima Polotan, sympathetic to Marcos where Lacaba was brilliantly antipathetic, recounted the same events but with hardly any sympathy for Marcos’s critics, whether old or young. Instead, she wrote of those in whom the radicalism of the youth inspired not admiration but fear.

“Right or wrong, one had kept one’s children off the streets all their lives, a canon, one had warned them clearly, they were not to break while they lived under one’s roof,” went Polotan’s “The Long Week,” published alongside Lacaba’s accounts of the January 26 and 30 riots in the Free Press of February 7, 1970. “They went to school and then came home. They had duties and chores, and tonight, while the police chased some other mothers’ children down below, one’s own young were at home getting supper for the small ones, washing the dishes, and locking up the kitchen before turning to their books—altogether not a popular kind of activism, not any kind of activism at all, not modern, but one’s personal, though passé, idea of parenthood. Parents surrender quickly these days and pay for their easy abdication with the broken skulls of their sons and the crushed legs of their daughters.”

Lacaba’s book recaptures the ferment, the freshness, of a period of agitation that resulted, alas, in dictatorship and in a generation robbed of their chance to lead. Yesterday’s FQS protesters are today’s middle-aged baby boomers with grown-up children of their own, often ensconced in the establishment, either in business or government. Yet the historical verdict seems clear: Lacaba’s articles have survived, Polotan’s, forgotten; youthful idealism continues to be honored; the New Society generally acknowledged to be a sham.

To read Lacaba’s book is to be able to answer a crucial question about that generation: Have yesterday’s activists-turned-today’s fat cats been able to totally jettison their radical youth, or is there something in them ingrained by that period that bears watching as they now handle the levers of power? I would argue that those FQS veterans now in high places cannot avoid a radically different outlook, with its quiet but perceptible impact on how power is wielded in the present day.

Reading eyewitness accounts of great events also points to the depressing reality that some things never change. The reactionaries remain so; the reformists stuck, too, in a rut of self-doubt; and the radicals in a time warp. And, indirectly, Lacaba’s book raises a question no one has ever been able to answer in a satisfactory manner. Did the agitation of idealistic and romantic youth in the late-Sixties and early-Seventies make dictatorship more appealing? For the shameful fact is that martial law was greeted with relief by a majority of Filipinos, at least from the upper and middle classes, who rejoiced in the curfew, in the cutting of hippie hair, not to mention the padlocking of Congress and suppression of liberties. For, if so, the Filipino may be innately reactionary—with all that such a conclusion shockingly implies.

Recalling that eventful first quarter of 1970, Dan Mariano writes, “Although the country had more roads, bridges, dams and irrigation systems than ever before, the economy had begun to nose-dive. The peso underwent a 100 percent devaluation, with the exchange rate going from P2:$1 to P4:$1, then P8:$1. The prices of basic commodities rose out of the reach of the working population, whose wages were not allowed to keep up with inflation.”

By April that year, a general strike was held protesting against increases in oil prices and transportation costs. The next year saw the Diliman Commune, the revolt by University of the Philippines students in February. But the sign of those times was not the Diliman Commune itself, which continues to throb gloriously in the memories of FQS veterans, but a parallel effort overlooked because it’s inconvenient. As students barricaded the campus and broadcast a recording of the President’s postcoital croonings to Dovie Beams, some residents in the area banded together and hunted down the radical students in the defense of order and their property rights.

And it was Ferdinand Marcos, the last product of the American educational system, but a mutant one in that his political maturity took place during the confused, corrupt and corrupting circumstances of the Japanese Occupation, who gambled on form trumping substance. So long as the trappings of legitimacy were maintained, the upper and middle class would embrace his “Revolution from the Center” and tolerate, if not actually accept with enthusiasm, his “New Society.”

The Plaza Miranda bombing took place on August 21, 1971. Two days after, 20 people were arrested as Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Martial law followed a year and a month later, restoring order on the surface but fueling the already underground radical movement that Jopson himself would at last join and sacrifice his life for. Yet, when revolution finally came, it wasn’t what the young radicals dreamed of in 1970. It was an entirely different creature, what came to be known as People Power in 1986, and Velvet Revolutions elsewhere since.

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By next week, we can expect the two major polling firms to inaugurate their series of monthly surveys focused on the national campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised if, starting with the first surveys of this year, the polling firms will start using sample ballots to engage in actual simulations of the elections. The choices reported by respondents would then more accurately mirror actual voting conditions.

Campaign strategists and political observers on all sides will be anxiously awaiting the January surveys, which will establish in many ways, the placement of the various candidates at the starting line, since the official campaign begins on February 9 (because of automation, there’s been an artificial hiatus between the filing of candidacies last November and the official start of the race early next month). So the January surveys will be taken by all sides as an indication, not only where they stand, but whether individual candidates kick off the formal campaign with an upward or downward trajectory in public perception.

Pulse Asia conducted its most recent survey from December 8-10.

Social Weather Stations results for a similar period, December 5-10, were as follows:

‘

A more recent survey was commissioned by Rep. Ronaldo Zamora, covering the period December 27-28 with a large respondent base.

This survey caused quite a stir in political circles because it allowed the Villar campaign to claim it was narrowing Aquino’s lead, validating the NP strategy of saturating the airwaves with commercials. In a recent commentary, Filomeno Sta. Ana III estimated the cost of the saturation drive at billion.

Recently, SWS released the findings for specific questions asked by Zamora which explored five specific scenarios. These questions are interesting in that they give an insight into what the Villar camp considers possible scenarios it has to consider.

The first question involved voter preferences if it were a two-man race:

The second question explored the possible impact of Estrada withdrawing from the race:

The third question explored the possible impact of Teodoro withdrawing from the race:

The fourth question explored the relative impact on the two leading contenders, of Teodoro being in the race:

‘

The final question explored the relative impact on the two leading contenders, of Estrada being in the race:

There are many insights that can be gleaned from the above: the presence of many candidates harms Aquino more than it does Villar. Aquino’s original constituency has remained durable but Villar has been more effective in converting new supporters. The gap between the two leading contenders, while narrower, still represent many millions of votes. You could argue Teodoro’s staying in the race harms Aquino more than it does Villar, as does Estrada’s remaining in the race, but withdrawal of one or both ultimately keeps the current proportions between the leading contenders about the same: neither gains significantly from the withdrawal either of Teodoro or Estrada.

I’m sure you can glean many other insights from the above, too. See Mon Casiple’s take on it:

If the survey’s error margin of 2.2% is factored in, Noynoy basically maintained his standing–something which had been the case since September 2009.

Former president Erap Estrada also essentially maintained his standing–he has 15%, losing only a single point. Former defense secretay Gibo Teodoro likewise maintained his 5% standing.

So where did Villar got his 6% increase? A little from Noynoy and Erap, more from the undecided voters. One can say that the tremendous (and very expensive) Villar media barrage during December helped achieved this.

However, the road ahead is rougher for Villar. For one, the Noynoy figures–unchanging as they are–means that Villar will have to do more than what he is doing now to bring these down. If this means throwing dirt on Noynoy, it risks a boomerang reaction from voters who have considered Noynoy as the candidate for reform. It would only solidify Noynoy’s vote. If this means strengthening his own percentages, Villar will have to cannibalize or woo Erap’s votes and also bring Gibo into his fold. At this time, there is only a little percentage left that can be categorized as undecided.

The situation here is slowly turning into a no-holds-barred political wrestling. At the same time, there is simply little time left to narrow the lead of Noynoy. When formal campaigning starts and this lead is still the same, there is an almost insurmountable problem for the Villar camp to solve–requiring dramatic and almost-a-miracle move(s) from all Noynoy’s opponents.

A fundamental assumption here is that Aquino is the only candidate the administration either loathes or fears to make failure -meaning the succesful election of Aquino- an option that cannot be tolerated.

If the enemy of your enemy is your friend, then it’s reasonable to conclude that the President’s main political objective is to prevent the election of Aquino by whatever means. All her options narrow or are extinguished if Aquino wins. At the same time, the President and her people have never relied on only one plan to achieve their objectives; they like multiple, parallel, scenarios on the principle that the more things are unfolding simultaneously, the greater the possible permutations leading to a desirable outcome.

Recently, Randy David put forward four possible scenarios for the elections:

There are election-related scenarios worth pondering which could exacerbate the political instabilities that have prevented us from attending to our more basic problems as a people. I will take up four such scenarios here starting from the riskiest to the most benign.

Scenario # 1: Failure of Elections

Instead of a last minute decision to shift to manual election, the automated elections proceed as scheduled. But on election day itself, the system breaks down in many areas, preventing the holding of elections. Comelec fails to put manual voting in place to meet such contingency. Long lines of voters feel frustrated and, sensing sabotage, they vent their fury on election authorities. Spontaneous protests break out everywhere, threatening to turn violent. The military and the police step in to quell lawlessness. Martial law is declared by the President, who holds on to power beyond June 30, and proclaims the formation of a Transition Council to restore order and prepare the country for a fresh round of elections.

Scenario 2: No Proclamation of National Winners

The automated elections proceed as scheduled. But the PCOS machines break down in many precincts in some regions of the country. The results are however sufficient to immediately declare the winners in local races – councilors, mayors, congressmen and governors. But the winners for national positions like senator, vice-president, and president could not be proclaimed because the slim margins could be offset by awaited results from the other regions. The House of Representatives is able to convene, but not the Senate. The Speaker is chosen by the newly-elected House, but not the Senate President. The results for the national level remain inconclusive even after June 30. In the meantime since a Speaker has been chosen by the new House of Representatives, that person can validly assert a claim to serve as acting President. That person could well be GMA.

Scenario 3: Wholesale automated cheating

The automated elections proceed as scheduled. Votes are counted, and the winners are proclaimed. But the results appear to contradict popular expectations. Charges of systematic rigging of the results through control of the source code gain credence as evidence of a pattern of automated adding and subtracting of votes piles up. With no parallel manual precinct count to validate the automated results, voters become agitated. Protests and demonstrations erupt in many parts of the country. The troops are called in to suppress violence and disorder. The President declares Martial Law to save the Republic. GMA holds on to the presidency until June 30, and then gives way to a multi-sectoral Transition Council to be led by her.

Scenario 4: A new government is in place

The automated election is successfully held. The results are accepted. A new government is elected. GMA gains a seat in Congress, and is elected Speaker. Or, at the very least, she controls a large enough block to be able to determine the agenda of the House. A law convening a Constitutional Convention is passed, and the election of delegates to the Convention is held simultaneously with the barangay elections scheduled for October 2010. A new Constitution changing the form of government from presidential to parliamentary is ratified in 2011. Speaker GMA becomes the first Prime Minister under the new Constitution, while the Presidency is transformed into a largely ceremonial role. Before all this can happen, of course, GMA will have to face many cases for corruption committed during her presidency. It will not be very easy to pin her down given the way she has handpicked the members of the high court and the Office of the Ombudsman. The ensuing battle will be protracted and will be fought on various fronts. Once again, political conflict will burden the judicial system. We cannot discount the intervention of the military at any point, especially if civilian authority is deadlocked and is unable to govern and respond effectively to emergencies triggered by natural calamities.

This brings me to recent, troubling, statements coming from various officials, including the President herself who seems engaged in a charm offensive with the very media she’s been so scornful of in the past. Se Raissa Robles’ entry, At a surprise Palace dinner President Arroyo told the foreign press: “I’m worried” over poll automation. Here’s the transcript of the President floating a trial balloon last Friday (January 22) in an impromptu dinner with the Foreign Correspondent’s Assocation of the Philippines:

FOCAP MEMBER: THERE ARE CONCERNS ABOUT THE AUTOMATION PROCESS.

GMA: Ya, thats why I called a national security council meeting. Because we needed to ask Comelec.

FOCAP MEMBER: ARE WE STILL ON SCHEDULE?

GMA:Ya, that’s what the Comelec said.

FOCAP MEMBER: WHAT ASPECT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT, OF AUTOMATION?

GMA: Well, it’s not been tested. So we expressed the concern that everybody —

FOCAP MEMBER (ME): MAAM, ARE YOU PERSONALLY WORRIED?

GMA: Um – I’m worried. I’m worried, but I – I have to go by what the Comelec said.

FOCAP MEMBER: WHAT IF IT FAILS?

GMA: They said it might fail in some – some areas. But it cannot, but not nationally.

FOCAP MEMBER: WHAT ABOUT THE AUTOMATION ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT?THE COUNTING,THE–

GMA: I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s just that –

FOCAP MEMBER [Raissa Robles]: YOU’RE UNEASY

GMA: I don’t know. Like all of you. Like all of you. It’s more –

FOCAP MEMBER: WHAT STEPS ARE YOU DOING TO AVOID A FAILURE OF ELECTIONS?

GMA: We have to support the Comelec in everything they want to do. It’s their primary responsiblity but we’re suporting them. That’s why we called a National Security Council meeting. To ask them what they would need. We’ve made the budget tthat they need available.

FOCAP MEMBER: LET’S KEEP OUR FINGERS CROSSED.

GMA: They said they’re not entertaining a failure of elections

FOCAP MEMBER: NANDON BA ANG (IS THERE A )BACKUP PLAN IF EVER?

GMA: You know I can’t be their spokesman. You have to ask them. But then they made a presentation. What about failure of elections. They said there may be some but only in isolated areas, but not nationwide.

FOCAP MEMBER: SO WHAT DID THEY SAY IN SOME ISOLATED AREAS

GMA: Same as now. It happens. So they have their mechanism. But it doesnt affect the national anymore.

FOCAP MEMBER: THEY ASSURED YOU IT WON’T BE MASSIVE FAILURE

GMA: That’s what they said. They’re not entertaining national failure of elections, maybe in some isolated areas but not nationwide.

FOCAP MEMBER: DID THEY MENTION TO YOU ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF PARALLEL MANUAL COUNT?

GMA: They did not say.

FOCAP MEMBER (DANA BATNAG OF JIJI PRESS: – YOU SAID COMELEC IS NOT ENTERTAINING THE POSSIBILITY. DOES THAT MEAN THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IS NOT PREPARING FOR THE POSSIBLITY OF A FAILURE OF ELECTIONS? OR ARE THERE PREPARATIONS?

GMA: As far as we are concerend, we would rather prepare to help Comelec succeed.

FOCAP MEMBER: IN CASE IT HAPPENS

GMA: You know, they said it’s not going to happen. So we take their word for it.

Actually, the statements are mounting in frequency now, but highly-placed administration officials have been putting forward theories that at first, seemed to exist in puzzling isolation, but more recent statements now allows us to connect the dots, so to speak.

September 15, 2009

It begins with the assertions made by Prospero Pichay back in September 2009 (see my entry Thirty-three percent, September 15, 2009):

Pichay says with enough money and an effective message, anything is possible, including a rapid and sustained rise in Teodoro’s numbers once he is anointed administration standard-bearer tomorrow. This is a way of telegraphing the built-in advantages of the ruling coalition: funds. Sources range from the formal to the informal, take your pick. the message might, indeed, be a comforting one for the coalition -”more of the same, but better”.

Pichay also emphasized the administration’s advantage in command votes. He was unwilling to concede that overall, the administration experienced a debacle, nationally, in 2007; though he does concede too much of their time and resources was wasted by inter-faction squabbling on the local level during that campaign. He does seem confident they have ironed out those kinks and can present a united front going into 2010.

What I found most interesting was his assertion that the administration has a solid 33% constituency, nationwide. The problem was, he said, was that constituency was sliced and diced in the senatorial polls, but that it will hold and deliver for a candidate for the presidency. With less than 1% in the surveys, this means Pichay expects Teodoro to rise 333% in the coming months, which will be a phenomenal achievement.

November, 2009

The President announces she will seek a seat in the House of Representatives.

December, 2009

The surveys take a snapshot of public opinion and the relative standing of the candidates nationally and regionally.

The President imposes martial law in Maguindanao and lifts it before Congress and the Supreme Court can exercise meaningful oversight.

January 10, 2010

More recently, Pichay put forward a more specific timeframe (see this Manila Times article):

Pichay said they expect Teodoro’s rating to surge to 25 percent to 30 percent in March. Teodoro, the presidential candidate of Lakas-Kampi Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD), has had single-digit rating in most of surveys on presidential candidates.

Pichay predicted that the 25 percent to 30 percent rating of Teodoro would be boosted by the “huge administration machinery.” He pointed out that Lakas-Kampi CMD has around 95 percent party support all over the country.

“With the built-in support from his party machinery, Teodoro will surely capture the presidency,” he added. He cited the disunity among the opposition as an added advantage of the administration party.

“In 2007, they were united but now they are disunited. We have strengthened our party while they quarrel among themselves. In 50 percent of provinces, our local candidates have no opposition,” he said.

January 11, 2010

The Palace announces President intends to appoint the next Chief Justice. Whether she succeeds or not, an institution’s been divided along with public opinion and the credibility of the court down the line.

January 22, 2010

The President (see above) floats the possibility of a “partial” failure of elections. First of all, her floating the possibility sets aside the worst-case scenario of a total breakdown; but it doesn’t eliminate the possibility of a large grey area in terms of the results, which the public expects to know within hours.

Janary 26, 2010

Comelec says it doesn’t see the need to accredit Namfrel since the PPCRV is there. As in the past, fostering divisions is a hallmark of the current dispensation’s ability to maneuver.

January 28, 2010

Comelec Commissioner Armand Velasco tells legislators Manual count set for 30% of precincts if machines fail.

Also yesterday, in Comelec eyes delayed text, e-mail on Election Day, says NCC chief, the Inquirer reported that the National Computer Center Chief launched another trial balloon: why not an Internet and SMS blackout? As he put it,

“Every Facebook user would be discussing the results [of the elections] on Election Day and we don’t want the data tied down by traffic,” said Diaz de Rivera.

This is a trial balloon because the more serious (and reasonable proposal) is to have a dedicated pipeline for data transmission needs; however, floating the idea of a communications blackout, which would affect foreign and domestic media, citizens’ watchdog groups, the various political camps, and the public, helps gauge the public’s reaction (if the public shrugs it off, then it becomes a marvelously attractive contingency plan for government).

Meanwhile, attention from the real square-off between the two leading contenders is deflected by amplifying the Pichay message.

January 29, 2010

The Pichay message is amplified further. The December snapshot is challenged along the way.

Looking ahead

The standing of Teodoro isn’t in the hands of the administration, of course; I’ve heard it said the Palace has given a deadline for Teodoro to improve his numbers by February-March otherwise they will pull the plug on his campaign, reducing it to a nominal one. Put another way, the administration’s options aren’t necessarily tied -based on what it touts as its own strengths in terms of machinery, etc.- to the fate of its official candidates (there are indications of the implied confluence of interests, e.g. administration senators have aligned themselves with the Nacionalistas in the current fracas over Villar; Gordon if you recall, was a contender in the administration coalition “primaries” for a standard bearer; and at the DLSU forum backed Teodoro in deflecting the question of whether he’d pursue cases against the President).

Plausibility is important: if it’s important to put forward the plausability of a Teodoro surge, all the administration eggs won’t be in that basket. The surge required is phenomenal by any measure. Whether or not its official candidates surge or not, the machinery remains and could still be directed towards helping other candidates.

Meanwhile, a benefit of the Pichay line is to artificially inflate the standing of the administration candidate, which distracts attention from where things are, at present: an Aquino-Villar race. In other words, setting up a straw man in the hope the leading contender focuses on knocking it down, giving breathing space for the embattled leading challenger.

Even if the machinery ends up fictitious, having been trumpeted, the plausibility of it kicking in on election day has already been firmly established. That being the case, it’s noteworthy to consider the parameters simultaneously being laid down. The administration claims it can mobilize 33% of the voters; the Comelec suggests it’s preparing for the possibility of 30% of the precincts having a failure of automation; the President in turn muses aloud that no total failure will take place but implies she thinks the Comelec will face a partial debacle.

Therefore the stage has been set for the public to expect automation pretty much everywhere but automation to fail in enough places to render a swift verdict on the results of the poll impossible. (See findings from testing the machines in the Cordillera and in Taguig see this commentary by Manuel Alcuaz, Jr.)

Returning to Raissa Robles, consider the numbers involved:

Do you know how big 30% is?

The registered voters now number 48,275,594 and 30% of that is 14.482 million.

That would definitely affect the outcome of the presidential polls.

Connect the dots. Remember, the troubling statements are being made, not by the candidates, but the government.

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The Long View
Villar’s impeachment
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:39:00 01/27/2010

ESSENTIALLY THAT IS HOW I HAVE ALWAYS viewed the process former Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. is trying to dodge: an impeachment. Senators in many ways can do as they please while in office, with the only real check and balance on their behavior being their fellow senators themselves.

In the case of the fundamental requirement for senatorial office, a mandate conferred by the electorate, the Senate itself retains primary jurisdiction through the Senate Electoral Tribunal. There senators can indeed exercise the tyranny of numbers, or they can go against political self-interest by demanding fair treatment even for opponents.

There was the case of Sen. Alejo Mabanag who then belonged to the minority Democrata. He was elected senator for the second senatorial district in 1922, but an electoral protest was filed. The Senate Electoral Tribunal, operating purely on the basis of the Nacionalista majority (at the time, justices didn’t sit in electoral tribunals as a foil to the majority), was poised to expel him. Senate President Quezon, then in the midst of a severe bout of tuberculosis, had himself brought to the Senate in a stretcher to demand justice for a political opponent. It’s no surprise that subsequently, Mabanag became a loyal Nacionalista, serving in the postwar Senate.

Even when Nacionalista Senators Ramon Diokno, Jose Vera and Jose Romero were denied their seats by the Liberals in 1946, the Senate had jurisdiction first, and only afterwards did they appeal their case to the Supreme Court, which reinstated them. But they didn’t deny the jurisdiction of the Senate just as the Senate accepted the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

In the Senate, its members can make speeches without fear of reprisal, on the hard-won legislative principle that an elected representative must be accorded every opportunity to act as the advocate of public causes. The only real limit on the kind of rhetorical impunity this privilege confers is that other senators may challenge one of their own, either by means of interpolations, or speeches of their own, or move for their colleague to be investigated and judged by what is essentially a jury of their peers.

It is the same logic that puts the fate of an impeached president in the hands of a jury composed of the only real peers of the chief executive: senators elected by the same national constituency. In the case of a president’s impeachment, the only real check and balance on the Senate is that the whole thing plays out in full public view, where partisanship can be pursued, but at the risk of being punished by the electorate in the next election.

The fundamentally political aspect of all this is freely allowed to play out because what is at stake, whether for a president being prosecuted by the House and upon whom the Senate is tasked to sit in judgment, or a congressman or senator haled before a committee to investigate allegations of unethical behavior, is public office. Public office is not an inalienable right; an office obtained by political means can be lost by political means, so long as the rules are observed in gaining or losing that office.

It is not as if life, liberty, or even property is at stake. There is no risk of the hangman’s noose or a firing squad, no automatic guarantee of imprisonment because only the courts can do that, and no risk of personal property being seized because no legislature can take that away.

Ninoy Aquino declined to participate in the proceedings of the military tribunal tasked with convicting him for rebellion, on the principle that as a civilian, he could only be judged by a civilian court. His life was at stake and in the hands of the wrong tribunal.

Villar, on the other hand, stands accused before the proper institution, the one to which he belongs, and which, institutionally, has a long tradition of insisting that it is the only body that has primary jurisdiction to determine the fitness for membership of one of its own—or what inferior sanctions ought to be imposed, short of expulsion.

The Constitution decrees that to lose office requires overwhelming numbers: a two-thirds majority to impeach a president or expel a member of Congress from either chamber. That is the equivalent of the courts requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt for conviction.

For a president, the absence of a two-thirds majority to convict means the failure of an impeachment. For a legislator, the maximum penalty of expulsion requires a similar majority and anything less means, at worst, a slap on the wrist. Which is not to say that something like censure, and a recommendation that charges be filed and ill-gotten profits returned, doesn’t hurt. For Villar the prospect of all these obviously does.

Not only would the findings of the Senate, in its capacity as a committee of the whole, provide ammunition for his critics, it might establish a precedent for future inquiries should he be elected to the presidency. That being the case, how he conducts himself now, as a senator facing scrutiny by his peers, is a clear indication of how he will conduct himself if the day ever comes when he has to face scrutiny by the same institution—this time in his capacity as chief executive.

I have mentioned how President Elpidio Quirino, the first chief executive to undergo impeachment proceedings, responded by vigorously facing the charges, opening up public records for scrutiny, and how the rules at the time fostered the proper investigation of the allegations. We have seen how President Joseph Estrada, after losing control of the House, attempted a vigorous defense. We know how President Macapagal-Arroyo engineered avoiding scrutiny by means of the rules and by denying, every step of the way, the legitimacy of any effort to hold her to account. Without even being president, Villar has embarked on an identical, and ominous, path.

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Above is the famous painting “Pollice Verso” by Jean-Léon Gérôme. Whether it’s an election year or not, contending parties clash in the arena of our institutions, with the public being ultimate judge of which side emerges victorious in the end. There is a gladiatorial aspect to politics, of course: an often brutal slog to achieve acclaim from the crowd, without which one faces political death.

Citizens may look at net worth, on attendance, on voting records, but also, it’s how individual officials handle themselves in the midst of controversy -and the positions they take during the controversy- that allows voters to consider whether to support or oppose candidates and parties.

Both the party Manuel Villar Jr. now heads, and the chamber, the Senate, he once headed and to which he still belongs, have their traditions based on confronting challenges, whether to achieve victory on the issues, or to turn defeat into a kind of victory.

Yesterday’s Senate session ended up as badly as debates in the House of Representatives, as one side adopted the tactics of the administration to sidestep the issues, while the other thundered and shrilled more out of a sense of brittle amor propio than in relentless pursuit of the issue at hand. Miriam Defensor Santiago weighed in today, with what began as an exposition on the rules that were a smokescreen for her abandoning the field of battle. What began as a call for statesmanship and considered debate, end up with her taking a cue from yesterday’s petulance on all sides.

I thought that Joker Arroyo, yesterday, let slip something interesting. If Villar is being charged with using public office for private gain, then why is it, he asked, that there isn’t corresponding scrutiny of the DPWH without whose cooperation Villar’s schemes wouldn’t have come to pass? A valid point, but it was an argument that slipped perilously close to tacitly endorsing the view that Villar is the President’s real candidate (the others are just her decoys is one view; another is that multiple candidates expand the potential of finding one to fully back as the campaign heats up): but no one took up the opportunity to pursue it.

Instead, a petulant obsession with amor propio led to senators charging every time the defenders of Villar waved red capes to deflect attention and to prevent a cohesive case from being presented.

The issues have been joined (see the case of the prosecution in Villar Ethics Presentation and the case for the defense in C5 Primer) by means of Committee Report No. 780 by the Committee of the Whole. You can also see a Summary of Charges. A Vista Land Roadshow Presentation for Australia from October 2007, which focuses on the “Daang Hari Growth Hub” is in harmony with a public statement he made in December of that year (see this Fact Sheet):

In a press release dated 1 December 2007 entitled “Villar leads inauguration of major highway,” he took credit for the P68 Million newly constructed C5- Merville Access Road. The press release stated:

“The 6.10 km road is designed to decongest the main service road networks such as the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), EDSA, Pres.Quirino, MIAA Road networks and Roxas Blvd. It starts from SLEX west service road passes through MIAA Property, RSG Subdivision and Kaingin Road towards Multi-National Avenue and ultimately traverses SM, AMVEL towards Sucat Road in Paranaque City.”

“Villar is also responsible for the Las Pinas-Muntinlupa-Laguna-Cavite (LPMLC) link road, more popularly known as Daang Hari, and the Zapote-Molino Link Road which greatly eased traffic in Cavite.”

But this issue is only one of many. They all revolve around whether or not Villar unduly fostered his financial interests by means of public office, disregarding reasonable limits on the holders of public office (declarations of potential conflict of interest, and divestments). The question was first raised by Joker Arroyo in the House of Representatives in a Privilege Speech on August 17, 1998 (see also the Q&A that followed). Along the way there are other issues that go beyond government contracts, and involve how he has treated commercial rivals and small property owners: the blog The Philippine Experience has focused on related issues in recent months (see, in particular, the entries for December 20, 2009, January 2, 2010, and January 7, 2010).

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The Long View
Lodestar
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:35:00 01/25/2010

JUNE 30, 2010 will mark 18 years since Cory Aquino stepped down from the presidency: there will be millions of first-time voters who reached maturity never having known her as anything other than an ex-president.

The problem confronting Cory Aquino and the country in 1986 was whether a middle path could be pursued, which required time for institutions and policies to be put in place. The challenge for those opposed to the middle path was to strangle our newly restored democracy in the cradle before it could even take baby steps. This could only be done, as the Presidential Commission on Government Reorganization put it, “to systematically de-Marcosify society.”

Cory Aquino outlined her political program in a speech before Rotary Clubs on Jan. 23, 1986 in which she said: “I propose to dismantle the dictatorial edifice Mr. Marcos has built. In its place I propose to build for our people a genuine democracy.”

What was the edifice Marcos and friends had built, and that needed to be demolished? Its foundation, Aquino pointed out, “is the total destruction of the old system of checks and balances. I admit that the old system was not perfect. But at least it gave to the judiciary and to the legislature a generous measure of respectability.” Eliminating checks and balances allowed Marcos free rein “to fill the most sensitive positions of government with officials whose primary qualification is loyalty to the President.” It allowed him to rig the rules to institutionalize impunity by making himself exempt from any real scrutiny—by the press, the legislature, or the courts.

In contrast, she proposed a three-point program: “(1) We must break up the concentration of power in the hands of the Executive; (2) We must set up effective safeguards against abuse and misuse of power; (3) We must make the executive and all who follow his directives answerable for their misdeeds.”

This would be accomplished by fostering professionalism and accountability in the judiciary and the military, and by restoring checks and balances by means of the oversight that is a built-in function of an independent legislature. All made possible by our institutions being under the ambit of a Constitution democratic and not authoritarian in orientation.

For those who’d been arguing that extreme problems required extreme solutions, this transition had to be foiled. It had to be foiled from within and without.

Mussolini had editorialized that “[c]onsent is as variable as the sand on the sea shore… Posed as axiomatic that all government measures create malcontents, what will you do to prevent the disquiet from spreading and representing a danger for the solidity of the State? You will avoid it by resorting to force.” His political origins had been as a leftist though he ended up a fascist; which suggests the shared interest of both extremes in provoking the middle to shift one way or another, in the hope that out of the short-term desire to survive, the middle will foster its own self-destruction.

This would disprove, in turn, the Churchillian dictum: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Democracy—the kind put in place after Edsa, the kind that prefers compromise between contending parties, rather than a winner-take-all attitude for whoever wins (by whatever means)—if proven to be simply bad, would then reinvigorate the ranks of those who could then argue that their proposals couldn’t possibly be worse. What was particularly noxious was the idea that force should be moderated by restraint; that artificial order was preferable to the messy but organically entrenched interaction of sectors.

This is why those who never experienced what the days of Cory’s presidency were like—the relentless assaults, the constant provocations, the substitution of slander and innuendo for lack of any real evidence to the contrary, regardless of cost to the followers of the plotters or the country—may wonder, today, why it is that Cory’s being able to hand over the presidency to an elected successor, with our present institutions in place, was such an outstanding achievement. And why, to this day, those who did live through that era on the whole consider this a great achievement and why those who wanted our democracy to be stillborn have not only never forgiven her for it, but keep trying to cripple our by-now adolescent democracy.

The very first time I set foot on the premises of the Batasang Pambansa was when then-Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo went before the House of Representatives during its “Question Hour,” and almost as much time separates that event from the time Joker finally disgraced himself utterly during the NBN-ZTE hearings, as has passed from the time Cory left office to the time she died. Within that period, the Joker who’d embraced accountability and scrutiny by submitting, as executive secretary, to the House’s questions, became the Congressman Joker who combated President Estrada, only to surrender to impunity by being a cranky sword and shield for President Arroyo and Senate President Villar.

The difference in fundamental attitudes have less to do with the individual choices of one man, and more to do with the approach of those at the top to power. The Joker Arroyo of today cannot possibly be really different from the Joker of yesterday; but it would seem his disgrace and those of the institutions in which he once served and in which he now sits, could only have been made possible by the realization of how powerfully personal example can influence behavior up and down the line. Cory, as the antithesis of Marcos, left people no choice but to try to live up to her example. Arroyo, on the other hand, liberated Joker to be himself.

And this is why Cory will forever be missed.

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Yesterday I attended a forum on the President’s plan to appoint the next Chief Justice. The legal issues have been reported in ABS-CBNNews.com, the Manila Bulletin, Businessworld, Inquirer.net, etc. In the forum it became clear that there’s a consensus on two points:

1. Both by tradition and law, the President shouldn’t appoint the next Chief Justice, much as her boosters insist to the contrary.

2. There is no reason to think there is a pressing need, from the perspective of the operations and functions of the Supreme Court, for a Chief Justice to be appointed in the twilight months of the present dispensation, despite the opinion of the current Chief Justice to the contrary.

My colleague John Nery in The iconoclastic Gloria A., puts the President’s latest scheme this way:

The true legacy of the Arroyo years may lie in the fabricated uncertainties that litter the road to Malacañang.

The entire debate over the appointment of the next chief justice, for instance, is only the latest manufactured crisis: What will happen to the Supreme Court if Puno’s successor is not immediately named? As the Court’s own history proves, the real answer is clear: nothing that can rise to the level of a crisis.

All this brings us back to Rawls, who wrote: “We start from the conviction that a constitutional democratic regime is reasonably just and workable, and worth defending. But given the fact of reasonable pluralism, we try to design our defense of it so as to gain the allegiance of reasonable people and to win wide support.”

President Arroyo’s machinations to ensure her political survival have had the effect, and perhaps were so designed, to create political or even constitutional uncertainty where there was none. This conduct is the exact opposite of Rawls’ ideal, “to gain the allegiance of reasonable people and to win wide support.”

Quite recently, a close adviser to the President described her as having turned “iconoclastic.” This initially puzzled me, but now I think I am beginning to understand. She has turned to breaking idols, to attacking cherished beliefs—including those that make democracy possible in the first place.

Now what piqued my curiosity was the seeming confluence of interests in a chief executive on one hand, ignoring past precedents to assert the prerogative to appoint the next Chief Justice, and the incumbent Chief Justice weighing in on this proposal from a different but politically-congruent perspective.

The answer, to my mind, doesn’t lie in anything legal but in something political. Take a look at this chart, which was provided by Atty. Marlon Manuel:

(You can a larger version here) It shows the period in office of the current justices of the Supreme Court, from the time of their appointment to their expected date of retirement. The last of the justices appointed by the President’s predecessors, the present Chief Justice, retires at the tail end of the President’s term. The President has appointed the rest of the high court, and five of her appointments, will retire within the term of the President’s immediate sucessor (making for possibly four to six judicial appointments to the high court by the Preident’s successor, since Brion and Perez might fall within the prohibited period for midnight appointments for that President). Seven more will retire during the term of that successor’s successor.

Anyway what’s relevant here are the two Justices affected either way, by the President’s intention to appoint the next Chief Justice. The overarching practice is to limit consideration of who will become Chief Justice, to the most senior Justices in the Court (although theoretically the President is free to appoint any lawyer who qualifies to the vacancy, whether currently in the high court or not). The last two Chief Justices were appointed on this basis, and what happened suggests a possible ongoing dilemma.

President Arroyo broke with precedent in bypassing Justice Reynato Puno in order to make Justice Artemio Panganiban the next Chief Justice, even though at the time, Puno was No. 1 in terms of seniority and Panganiban No. 2. But if Puno had been made Chief Justice immediately, Panganiban would never have had a chance to be Chief Justice. There was speculation that the Catholic Church lobbied for the faithful Panganiban and opposed Puno, who besides being a Protestant was, more significantly, a Mason. Also, Panganiban was instrumental in then Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr.’s decision to provide the legal basis for then Vice-President Arroyo’s assumption of power during Edsa Dos.

The President appointed Panganiban who got to be Chief Justice, then followed the seniority standard again when he retired, so that Puno also got to serve as Chief Justice.

Today, No. 1 and No. 2 in terms of seniority are Justices Antonio Carpio (appointed October 26, 2001 and who will serve until 2019) and Renato Corona (appointed April 2, 2002 and who will serve until 2018), respectively. If the President does not appoint the next Chief Justice when Puno retires on May 17, 2010, then Justice Carpio will automatically serve as Acting Chief Justice until the next President appoints the new Chief Justice by the Constitutionally-imposed deadline on August 17, 2010. Following the seniority rule, Carpio would be first in line to be appointed Chief Justice.

On the other hand, if the President appoints the next Chief Justice, she can invoke her own past precedent in bypassing the No. 1 in the seniority list, to select the No. 2, allowing No. 2 to serve as Chief Justice while keeping No. 1 still top of the list in terms of seniority, allowing him to eventually serve as Chief Justice, too.

What the incumbent President and Chief Justice have in common is that Justice Carpio has been a thorn in both their sides. Carpio has voted fairly consistently against the President’s arguments in high-profile cases and also taken a position usually at odds with the Chief Justice’s opinions. Corona, on the other hand, has been in harmony with the President’s legal positions and the opinions of the Chief Justice.

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The Long View
Power or money?
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer

First Posted 22:29:00 01/20/2010

MOST OBSERVERS IDENTIFY THE FIRST BATTLE in the 2010 campaign as having taken place in November 2008, when Manuel Villar Jr. resigned the Senate presidency rather than be deposed by his peers. Other possible presidential contenders had to deprive Villar of a position traditionally seen as a major stepping-stone to the presidency.

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