Campaign 2004: What the Voters Missed

The country’s new leaders will wrestle with the problems plaguing the Philippines: a huge debt, an alarming budget deficit, a growing jobless rate, and plunging investments. Not to mention a potentially explosive population growth rate amid increasing poverty and a rising Communist insurgency.

By Carlos H. Conde
Bulatlat.com

The country’s new leaders will wrestle with the problems plaguing the Philippines: a huge debt, an alarming budget deficit, a growing jobless rate, and plunging investments. Not to mention a potentially explosive population growth rate amid increasing poverty, a rising Communist insurgency and terrorism.

These problems, of course, have always been there. They are, in fact, at the core of the country’s concerns. Or at least they should be.  

But these issues hardly surfaced, let alone were discussed, during the campaign the past three months. The candidates, including the incumbent President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, chose instead to entertain.

“Philippine politics remains a politics of personalities,” said Rosario Bella Guzman, executive director of Ibon Foundation, a private research institute. Entertainment, mainly to attract crowds, and the campaign’s focus on personalities rather than programs sidelined these issues during the campaign, she said.

“The most disappointing aspect of this election is that nobody came out with good platforms. All were motherhood statements,” said Benito Lim, a political scientist at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines.

The Philippine economy is one of the worst performers in Southeast Asia, data from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) show. The bank forecasts gross domestic product this year at 5 percent, the lowest in the region after Indonesia.

The unemployment rate is high (11.4 percent), a “major cause of poverty” and a reflection of the economy’s lack of capacity to generate employment, the bank said.

The government’s foreign and domestic debt has been rising steadily; as of February, it stood at $61 billion. If the government pursues its plan to borrow more than $1 billion more this year, the country’s debt level could surpass the value of the domestic economy.

Spending on social services has declined because debt payments increased. The government spends 32 percent of its annual budget on debt servicing.

The huge budget deficit, which reached almost $3.5 billion in 2003, has wreaked havoc on the country’s fiscal position. The ADB blamed weak tax collection for the deficit.

Political uncertainties

Foreign direct investments decreased: from $1.8 billion in 2002 to only $319 million last year. This was largely due to political uncertainties that scared investors away, the bank said.

The population is growing rapidly, at 2.3 percent a year. “Rapid population growth retards development in the country,” the bank said in a report released last month. “Unless major economic and political reforms are accomplished, it will be extremely difficult for the country to lift its potential growth rate,” it added.

More than half of Filipinos live on less than two dollars a day, many under conditions of extreme poverty. In the countryside, landlessness is still prevalent while the peasantry, long neglected by the government, continues to provide the warm bodies for the 35-year-old communist rebellion.

But the Filipino electorate hardly had a glimpse of these problems during the campaign.

The fact that Ms. Arroyo’s strongest challenger happens to be the country’s most popular actor may have played a part in the candidates’ failure to tackle these issues, Ibon’s Ms. Guzman said.

In her campaign rallies, Ms. Arroyo, 57, used entertainers to attract crowds just as much as her main opponent, Fernando Poe Jr., did. At one point, her camp held an Arroyo look-a-like contest that featured homosexuals dressed and made-up like the president.

In her political advertisements, Ms. Arroyo highlighted not only her accomplishments -- mainly infrastructure projects -- but Mr. Poe’s handicap as well, particularly his political inexperience and supposed lack of intelligence. It didn’t help that Mr. Poe had been silent about his platform.

Pre-election survey

And it seemed to have worked: quick counts and exit polls indicate that Arroyo was leading in the counting. But a survey before the election also showed that almost a quarter of the electorate – 24 percent – were either “undecided” or “uncommitted.” The outcome for the president and vice-president, the pollster said, “hinges on the decisions of the undecided and the uncommitted.”

Mr. Poe’s camp tried not to sound worried. Just like in his movies, his campaign manager said, Mr. Poe would beat his enemies in the end.

The campaign had been a bitter one, made more acrimonious by the lifting of the ban on political advertisements that allowed candidates to publicize just about anything, true or not, that they could use against their opponents.

In his final campaign rally on Saturday, the 64-year-old Mr. Poe sounded hurt and indignant. “Public service is not about your accomplishments and boasting about it,” he said. “It is not about insulting others and mocking them. It is about choosing one who is honest and trustworthy.”

Aside from Mr. Arroyo and Mr. Poe, three other candidates are running for president: Panfilo Lacson, a former police chief; Raul Roco, a former senator and education secretary; and Eddie Villanueva, the leader of the country’s largest Born Again group called Jesus Is Lord.

The Philippines has more than 42 million registered voters. On May 10, they voted for president, vice president, 12 senators, 212 congressmen and more than 17,000 local positions, from provincial governor down to town councilor. Bulatlat.com

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