Babe's Eye View article

Filipinos all over the world will be riveted to their television sets today as they wait for the outcome of the fight between Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey. As usual, there will be no traffic in Metro Manila, and the Philippine National Police will get a short respite since thieves, pickpockets and all kinds of criminals will most likely stay at home. Most likely, too, there will be a ceasefire in Mindanao and elsewhere in the countryside as soldiers and rebels take a break from the fighting to watch the people’s champ slug it out with the Ghanaian fighter who has promised to give Pacquiao the “fight of his life.”

On this day, all walls will be broken as men, women, children, rich, poor, Reds, pinks and even rival political parties will be united in their desire to see the Pacman win once again, basking in the adulation the world continues to shower on the legendary Filipino boxer. As Manny himself said, he would fight every day if he could, knowing very well he has the power to unite the country even for a day.

Of course, this is wishful thinking especially with the upcoming elections with Filipinos rooting for different candidates. As is often the case during elections, opposing camps will be making accusations against each other—further inflaming the division among voters. This is more pronounced in hotspots in Mindanao where bloodshed often characterizes elections as rival clans clash for supremacy in their fiefdoms—with persuasion achieved through guns, goons and drugs all rolled into one.

In the presidential race, recent surveys indicate a narrowing gap in the ratings between Noynoy Aquino and Manny Villar, with analysts saying the two are statistically tied. However, supporters of Joseph Estrada say their candidate is gaining from the decline in the ratings gap between Aquino and Villar. This has encouraged Erap to continue with his candidacy, believing he will win once more with the help of his masa base. No doubt the race to the presidency will be very tight, and with nine candidates, there is every possibility that the country will have a minority president once again.

Since the time of FVR, the Philippines has never had a majority president. Even in the 1998 elections when Joseph Estrada won by 10 million votes against Joe de Venecia, Erap was still a minority president, getting less than 40 percent of the votes. The same is true in 2004 with GMA getting less than 40 percent in a field of five candidates. At best, what we have had since then is a winner by “plurality” who, while he may have garnered the biggest number of votes, was unpopular with the majority who voted for the other candidates.

And this is precisely the problem with a multiparty system with so many candidates vying for the presidency. For one, there is always the possibility of a losing candidate—especially if the margin of victory is slim (like the 800,000 votes of FVR against Miriam Defensor-Santiago or GMA’s one million margin over the late Fernando Poe Jr.) protesting the results because in this country, no candidate ever loses, with every loser claiming he was cheated.

Second, a minority president with a weak mandate will spend so much time building coalitions to strengthen his administration and protect his tenure from impeachment and other attempts to dislodge him. Which is why the proposal for a run-off elections between the candidates with the two highest votes makes sense—except that it will mean additional expenses for the Comelec, the candidates and even the voters, not to mention the need to amend the Constitution first.

More people are clamoring for a return to the two-party system, where voters will decide based on platform rather than personality. The rise of the multiparty system seems to have reinforced this personality-based politics with political parties—even major ones, fielding candidates based on popularity, counting on the tendency of Filipinos to vote for someone simply because they like him without really considering if he is competent or not.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the Philippines has suffered so much because of the continuing political division among people. As the campaign gets hotter, candidates will be lashing out against each other, their attacks bordering on the personal, like what’s happening with one of the frontrunners, Manny Villar, who has been the object of attack by other candidates. Erap’s claim that Villar tried to buy him off was received by people with a little suspicion. Then came Dick Gordon whose similar claim was viewed with surprise. But Jamby Madrigal’s belated allegation of a P1-billion bribe comes as totally ridiculous. She just did Villar a favor because no one really believes the accusations anymore because if they were true, then every Tom, Dick and Harry will want to be a candidate so they, too, can become instant billionaires.

But the worst part is when a newly-installed administration’s main agenda is to exact revenge on its predecessor because it will only widen the rift among Filipinos. There are more important issues the next president should focus on like the energy crisis, El Niño and most especially poverty—compounded by the growing number of Filipinos mostly coming from the poor. Even Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral admits our population growth rate is not falling fast enough.

That is why whoever wins in May should begin by making it a priority to solve poverty levels in this country instead of focusing on vengeance and retribution, because six years of division is a very long time for people to wait for major problems to be solved and endure hunger.