Maybe a debate is the wrong format if the objective is to get a good insight into the candidates. A debate is a competition on who is able to best express himself under pressure. We are trying to elect a president, not a champion debater for the Toastmaster’s Club.
A debate in our electoral context is like a cockfight, a pintakasi that generates audience ratings by encouraging the protagonists to be as nasty to each other as they can. Stage presence is more important than character, intelligence and empathy. This is hardly illuminating for the voters.
For last Sunday, UP Political Science Assistant Professor Jan Robert Go told Philstar.com in an online interview that “the candidates attacked each other’s person, which is not necessarily helpful. I hope the debate did not confuse the people.”
The academic said the presidential candidates had been more preoccupied with “bashing” and “mudslinging.” “If there were attempts from candidates to answer the questions, they managed to reconfigure their answers and give a different response than expected,” Go said.
Given the short amount of time allotted for answers and rebuttals, the two debates delivered very little useful insights. There is something wrong with trying to cram so many issues in so little time so as to invite the candidates to answer in sound bites tailor made for the next day’s newspaper headlines. Sound bites are often misleading.
No wonder after two debates, we have yet to feel we are better able to choose the right candidate. Those of us who are committed to one of them are unlikely to change preference. Those of us still trying to make up our minds are still waiting to hear something really compelling from any of them.
Perhaps a better format is a serious one-on-one interview of about 30 minutes each conducted by a seasoned interviewer like Charlie Rose. The problem with our local media interviewers is their propensity to compete for the limelight with their subject. They often ask long winded questions as well as talk too much. The other problem is that very rarely do local media interviewers prepare well enough for the job.
A one-on-one ala Charlie Rose will be able to give the audience a good idea of what kind of a person the candidate is… what drives him or her. The candidate’s grasp of issues will come out too, but it is not as important as revealing the personality of the candidate and his suitability for the position. I suspect that if the then candidate Noynoy underwent a Charlie Rose interview, his stubbornness and lack of sensitivity would have shown.
The way the two Comelec debates were structured did not allow us to peek a little more deeply into what kind of persons the candidates are. Indeed, there was also not enough time to test their knowledge of issues or to gauge their real commitment to their campaign promises.
There is a need to get into the personalities of the candidates for us to get a good feel of who is deserving of our trust. Because they are politicians, their public image had been carefully designed by image makers and there is a need to peel that image away to see the real person.
Stop asking the candidates to reveal their platforms. All you are likely to get are well crafted paragraphs from handlers that may or may not be what the particular candidate has in mind. In other words, asking for platforms is like asking to hear platitudes, motherhood statements that mean little or nothing.
Indeed, AIM Prof Ronald Mendoza found out, after analyzing what they call platforms, that the policy positions of all the presidential candidates “indicate a surprising degree of similarity on many fronts.” None of them are thinking of the elections as a means “to spark collective action on the way forward for the country.”
It is a pity, really, because as Dr. Mendoza puts it, “elections are supposed to renew a nation’s ability to work as one, armed with a common vision and the steps necessary to accomplish it. Candidates’ policy reform platforms should reflect that vision and begin to detail those necessary steps.”
In the absence of ideologically based political parties, the quest for the presidency is a personal one. What they call a political party is nothing more than a creation of the candidate trying to win the mandate to lead from Malacañang.
Dr. Mendoza went through the trouble of analyzing the so called platforms of the candidates and here is what he found out:
“Almost all want to support and even expand the government’s flagship anti-poverty program, Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).
“All appear to support the Freedom of Information bill. And all but one suggest recalibrating the economic provisions in the Constitution.
“All but one support continued agrarian reform, likewise, all but one support income tax reforms.
“Further, all but one appear supportive of the RH Law. And three of the five candidates support ASEAN economic integration.
“Nevertheless, the overall consistency of positions on socio-economic and anti-poverty reforms does not seem to be reflected in the positions on key political reforms. Only two of the candidates have definitively supported an anti-political dynasty bill (Poe and Santiago).
“Only one candidate categorically supports a law enhancing political party development (Santiago).
“Only one candidate advocates consistently for dramatic political reforms reflected in a federalist system of government (Duterte).
“Only two candidates support the Bangsamoro Basic Law (Duterte and Roxas). But for these distinctions, the candidates actually appear to be very much alike in their policy platforms.”
For my part, I am disappointed no one has really pinned down candidates on how they plan to implement their promises.
For instance, I am anxious to hear how Mar Roxas intends to implement a catch-up program for infrastructure development. How will a President Roxas make a DOTC he once headed act faster, given that their excuse of a tough Procurement Law will still be there after June 30.
And I really think we are entitled to know who the people in the candidate’s inner circle are. For that matter, we should be told who are funding their expensive campaigns.
Thus far, the Comelec Presidential Debates have failed its objective to help the voters in picking the right choice. I am afraid, the next debate, said to follow a town hall format, will try to cover too much ground in a rather superficial manner.
The last debates were entertaining, but that is not the purpose of the exercise. It is too bad we think of television in this country as primarily an entertainment medium. It shouldn’t be. The next one should be more illuminating than entertaining. But it may be too late for that to happen.
Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco