Wishful Thinking for the 1992 Elections:

The Principled Vote 

as a New Factor

This article was released by the Kamalaysayan Media Service and published in Health Alert, the monthly newsletter of the Health Action Information Network (HAIN), in its issue No. 128, which came out in April 1992 or one month before the elections. A few paragraphs giving historical backgrounds are omitted in this presentation.*

THE CURRENT election season is unprecedented in our country’s history. The number of well-known presidential aspirants (seven as of this writing) is only one of the reasons.

Another is the sheer number of posts at stake – with 24 senatorial slots, 200 seats in the House of Representatives and thousands upon thousands of elective local government positions – and that of aspirants falling over one another in a mad scramble for the people’s nod.

A new factor has emerged on the scene, gaining the recosnition and respect of a substantial portion of the electorate. This is the "NGO factor," also known as the cause-oriented vote.

‘New Politics’ 

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During the campaign period for the 1989 congressional elections, the call for "New Politics" was raised by such organizations such as the leftist Partido ng Bayan (PnB), which fielded seven senatorial candidates and a sprinkling of district-level congressional candidates in coalition with other groups. The attempt was trampled underfoot by the guns, goons and gold of traditional politicians’ clans and parties.

But the idea for principled politics caught on, especially with the unprecedented multiplication and growth of non-government organizations and people’s organizations (NGOs and POs), which have increasingly covered various occupational sectors, lines of advocacy and aspects of social life.

The Aquino administration has hastily claimed this to be the fulfillment of the promise to "institutionalize people power."

Seeing the future electoral potential of these organizations, and observing that foreign donor preferred NGOs to government instrumentalities as channels of assistance to reach the people, government agencies and bureaucrats and their close relatives began to set up their own equivalents of the NGOs. These instant creations have come to be called "GO-NGOs" (pronounced "gongos") or "government’s NGOs," emphasizing a contradiction in terms.

Both the genuine NGOs/POs and the government’s own "NGOs) began to lash out at the traditional politicians, who have since become more commonly tagged with the derisive label, trapos (literally, dirty rags). The traditional politicians have floated a similar-sounding but non-pejorative term, "tradpols" and jeered the NGO and GO-NGO personalities as "unelected and unelectable." However, it was too late. The trapo stigma had stuck.

Meanwhile, as Election Day approached, the trapos were throwing so much mud upon one another that they were discrediting all the more their entire bunch. This has enhanced the danger of seducing the military to use it as an excuse to later move in and launch a coup to "save the republic," akin to their first "coming-out party" two decades before.

Metro Manila and various other parts of the country have been swept with recurring rumors about a new military takeover plot to be executed immediately before, or right after, the scheduled date of the elections. The would-be preemptive coup has even been given a name: Oplan No-El, short for "no elections." Some political observers have said this may turn out to be a logical repeat of former Defense Secretary Fidel Ramos’s refusal to abide by his having been defeated by House Speaker Ramon Mitra Jr. in the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP) selection process for standard bearer; others say such a move would more logically come from the direction of Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, another presidential bet, who had been a close ally of deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The ‘NOTA’ Drift

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It was Supreme Court Chief Justice, and erstwhile presidential aspirant, Marcelo Fernan who coined the word "NOTA" (short for "none of the above") to express disapproval of all the early campaigners for the Palace post. Fernan has since agreed to become the running mate of Mitra, one of those presidential aspirants his NOTA posters and stickers had earlier asked voters to reject outright.

But the NOTA logic has apparently remained, with large numbers of voters and principled groups agonizing over the task of having to choose one president from this field of candidates. This is a throwback to the "lesser evil" dilemmas of years and decades past.

Apparently, the NOTA drift has been abetted by the "Vote Wisely" promotional campaign launched by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and various civic, religious and media organizations mainly through the mass media. Somehow, this campaign may have succeeded in persuading many voters to take this electoral exercise seriously, to give it more meaning than its usual entertainment value and opportunities for extra income. A friend of this writer remarked: "How can anyone vote wisely given this batch of candidates to choose from? I’m thinking of spending Election Day sport-fishing off the coast of Zambales, kung ganyan din lang!"

However, not all those running for posts to run our country are trapos and cheap entertainers. Some of them do represent New Politics in this contest. Given the chance they can still form a positive though miniscule minority in the new legislature. However, that chance is precarious.

The ‘NGO Vote’ 

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The NGOs and POs are perceived to influence millions of voters across the archipelago. These millions of potential ballots, in a field of 20 million, cannot by themselves propel any national candidate to victory. But they hold the potential of becoming decisive in a closely-fought contest. With seven candidates for the presidency (Cojuangco, former Defense Sec. Juan Ponce Enrile, former First Lady Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, Mitra, Ramos, former Senate President Jovito Salonga, and Miriam Defensor Santiago), with no frontrunner expected to win a majority vote, this factor can prove to be vital in determining the final outcome.

A straw vote conducted by the United Rural Sector Electoral Coalition (URSEC) among 1,500 farmer leaders topbilled progressive senatorial candidates Wigberto Tañada, Florencio Abad and Nemesio Prudente. The URSEC reportedly covers a membership of 1.8 million peasants, and includes the Congress for People’s Agrarian Reform (CPAR), the Bukluran ng mga Tagapaglikha ng Butil, the Kaisahan ng Maliliit na Magniniyog sa Pilipinas, and the Kilusan ng mga Mamamalakaya sa Pilipinas.

The same straw vote reportedly also included entertainers Vicente "Tito" Sotto III and Ramon Revilla in these groups’ preferred lineup.

There was also the "Earth Vote," the candidates-rating project undertaken by Green Forum Philippines, in cooperation with a University of the Philippines-based research institution. The presidential and vice-presidential candidates were rated in performance and platform in such aspects and categories as environmental management, forestry and fisheries development, rural development and agrarian reform, and political leadership, by 43 representatives of participating organizations. Topping the ratings in both performance and platform were Salonga and his running mate, Aquilino Pimentel Jr. Green Forum president Maximo Kalaw Jr. stressed that this did not constitute a formal endorsement of the candidates but was intended to be a guide to the voters. The "Earth Vote" project and its results were presented to the media in a joint forum held by Green Forum and the CLEAR Media Organization on the eve of Earth Day 1992.

‘Mang Pandoy,’ the Voter

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"Mang Pandoy" is that flesh and blood personification of the voters, mounted by ABC Channel 5 to confront presidential candidates before a Comelec-sponsored debate. The "presidentiables" had to respond with their respective diagnoses and prescriptions. Mang Pandoy has been portrait of the Filipino citizen in worse shape than earlier representations of Juan de la Cruz had ever been. He is a picture of near-destitution that all would-be leaders had to respond to.

But how will Mang Pandoy perform as a voter? Has the Filipino finally "arrived" as a voter? Or will he vote the way he and his parents have been voting all these past decades, resigned to and completely absorbed in the periodic farces? Or can he now make the unprecedented statement of the principled vote, one that would give any significance at all to all those demands and measures for a clean count?

The principled vote would not be of a myopic memory, it would not support candidates associated with the most naked of repression and rapaciousness this country has ever experienced in the past half-century. The principled vote is one that rejects recycled promises, prescriptions, and excuses, one that really pushes forward a demand for the allevi leviation and resolution of Mang Pandoy’s social predicament.xxx

There have been signs that a growing section of the electorate is galvanizing behind such a principled vote. This is part of what is called New Politics, spearheaded by a relatively new phenomenon on our political scene, the non-government and people’s organizations. But it is too early to tell whether such a development has already touched the mind and heart of the average Mang Pandoy who would no cast his vote.

Has Mang Pandoy really "arrived" as a voter? As a voter of consequence? As a voter of real consequence to centuries- and decades-old problems that have pushed the nation further and further on to more widescale destitution and the imminent danger of full social disintegration?

The way he will vote on May 11 will be remembered by his children, and his children’s children, hopefully not in regret and shame.

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