| |
Contributions from
the Column
Tribune
Patronage vs. popularity
“An internationally binding frame of reference”
A decade of private policy making
12/2004
|
|
[ Manipulated elections ]
Patronage vs. popularity
Substantial democracy requires more than formal elections. The Philippines provide an example for governance by manipulative means. This is endemic to any society with a large marginalised population, in which the institutional tools of formal democracy are unable to function because of the poverty and economic dependence of the many.
[ By Randolf S. David ]
Like all elections conducted after the restoration of formal democracy in 1986, the 2004 Philippine presidential election was a contest between patronage and popularity, between money politics and celebrity politics. What distinguished the last election from previous ones, however, was the brazenness in which the electoral results were manipulated by the party in power in order to prevent the election of the opposition candidate.
The post-Marcos 1987 Philippine Constitution expressly clipped the powers of the presidency to prevent the rise of another dictator. One of its key provisions limits the term of the president to six years without re-election. This ban, however, did not apply to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, because a head of state who has served less than four years in office may seek a new 6-year term.
In 2001, Vice President Arroyo had succeeded to the presidency following the ouster (or “resignation” according to the Supreme Court) of President Joseph Estrada, a former movie idol with great popular appeal. He had been elected president by a landslide vote in 1998. Detested by the rich but lionized by the poor, he faced impeachment proceedings for corruption and plunder after being in office for only two years. The impeachment process was cut short when the prosecutors unexpectedly walked out claiming that a pro-Estrada majority among the senator-jurors had prejudged the case.
This sparked daily protests by the country’s educated and middle classes, replicating the people power uprising that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. These mass actions led to the withdrawal of recognition of the president (a mutiny in fact) by leaders of the armed forces, and the hasty departure of Estrada from the official presidential residence.
Mrs. Arroyo stepped into the breach and served the remaining three and a half years of Estrada’s term, spending much of that time campaigning for a fresh six-year mandate. While significant, the middle class vote amounts to no more than 15% of the electorate. The majority belong to the lower middle class and the lower classes. These sections of society had provided Estrada’s mass base and were now likely to support his close friend Fernando Poe Jr., another movie actor.
Mrs. Arroyo’s campaign strategy had five objectives:
– constitute a slate that included mass media celebrities,
– win over a segment of the voting poor by enticing them with temporary jobs, scholarships, health insurance cards, agricultural inputs, electric and water connection and the likes,
– split the votes of the opposition by encouraging a second opposition candidate to run,
– enlist mass media and civil society support by stoking fears of another disastrous presidency led by an ignorant populist figure, and
– ensure control of the crucial canvassing process.
Accordingly, Mrs. Arroyo recruited TV and film celebrities to her team. She ordered various government agencies to spend on a highly focused social distribution scheme meant to corner votes. Some of her supporters also funded the campaign of Senator Ping Lacson, the opposition’s second most promising candidate. Journalists were paid to portray Poe as a bumbling idiot. And lastly, Mrs. Arroyo’s campaign bought out opposition candidates in key areas depriving FPJ, as her opponent is popularly known, of the poll-watchers he needed to monitor the conduct of the election.
While she lost in most of the country’s regions and provinces, she made up for these losses by winning big in the three provinces of Pampanga, Cebu, and Iloilo. Voting in these provinces was recorded at 8 to 1 in favour of Mrs. Arroyo, with an astounding voter-turn out of more than 90% (the national average was 75%). There was nothing mysterious about the way this outcome was arranged. Particularly manipulation prone are provinces such as those in conflict-ridden Mindanao where local warlords virtually control the entire voting process. Six years earlier, Estrada had overcome similar orchestrations by winning at the national level with a margin large enough to thwart such cheating.
In the final analysis, it was the control and manipulation of the canvassing process that ensured Mrs. Arroyo’s retention of the presidency. The final stage was conducted by Congress. The opposition questioned the authenticity of nearly every provincial certificate, but was outvoted by legislators from Mrs. Arroyo’s camp. In the end, she was proclaimed winner by more than a million votes, or less than three percent of the votes cast.
These figures are dubious. Reliable estimates suggest that the presidency could have gone either way with a margin of not more than 300,000 votes. A nationwide survey showed that, three months after the election, 55 percent of the population believed that Poe had been cheated. These data were reported on in the national press.
The scenario was only too familiar to Filipinos. They had seen how Marcos stole the snap election of 1986. During the canvassing, protest actions began to fill the streets. But Arroyo administration responded firmly by fielding soldiers and policemen by the thousands. This shock treatment overwhelmed the protestors who came mainly from the ranks of the urban poor. Elements of civil society that played a decisive role in the ouster of Marcos and Estrada remained significantly absent. The mass media, which had almost unanimously endorsed Mrs. Arroyo, portrayed the protestors as crowds-for-hire.
In fact, the major forces of Philippine society – business, the Church, the mass media, the political establishment, and civil society – have accepted President Arroyo’s retention of the presidency. Basically, the middle classes feel more threatened by the revolt of the poor than by the corruption of the political elite.
The situation, however, is not comfortable for the government. With more than half of Filipinos living below the poverty line, a volatile constituency of the marginalized and discontented can be mobilised fast.
Though it quietly sided with Mrs. Arroyo in the last election, civil society has no enduring affection or admiration for the president, who is widely perceived as an opportunistic traditional politician. The churches have also remained guarded in their support for Mrs. Arroyo.
Sadly, the country faces many critical issues that require a credible, strong, and decisive leader who can demand sacrifices and command the respect of the nation. A head of state without stable popular support is the last thing the Philippines need. Unlike other Southeast Asian countries, the archipelago of 7000 islands has not significantly improved its productivity in the past 20 years. The country is burdened by a huge government debt. Interest payments take up one-third of the annual budget and, in 2005, will for the first time exceed the total bill for government salaries.
The fiscal position is so bad that President Arroyo, in summer, jolted the entire financial community by declaring that the country was not just facing a fiscal crisis; it was already in the midst of one. This candid statement was prompted by a desperate bid to raise revenue by imposing new taxes and charging much higher rates for power supply.
Experts have warned that these are stopgap measures aimed at averting a disastrous default on loan obligations. The real problem, as they see it, is that a big part of the nation’s accumulated public debt was incurred by government corporations and financial institutions backed up by sovereign guarantees.
Only a part of the debt burden was inherited from the dictatorship. At least half of it was accumulated by the governments that came after Marcos. The nation is paying dearly for the false prosperity of the free borrowing and spending years before the Asian Crisis of 1997. Since the late 1970s, the economy has had to rely almost singularly on the dollar remittances of overseas Filipino workers. Today, eight million people are transferring an annual amount of $ 10 billion. However, this money has never done more than fuel a vibrant shopping-mall economy driven by imports.
Ironically, the absolute poverty in which the majority of Filipinos live sets the rules for the country’s political life. Ever since Marcos’ fall, the elites have only really had two instruments at their command in electoral politics: patronage and popularity.
Patronage requires enormous amounts of money and a nationwide campaign machine that serves both as a distribution channel and as a vote-getting structure. Experience shows that mass popularity of the kind that movie actors personify can easily trump money and political machine. The poor are more prone to give their votes to people they admire and emotionally relate to than to politicians who cynically buy their votes with money and other short-term benefits.
For the time being, President Arroyo is relying on the consent of the middle classes to help her weather the coming political storm. So far, police and military, the leaders of which have been showered with favours, seem willing to support this course. Her democratic legitimacy remains questionable, to say the least.
Professor Dr. Randolf S. David
teaches Sociology at the University of the Philippines.
randolf@pacific.net.ph
|
