Winning the electorate is something else. It means being able to have a nation understand why a candidate deserves to be voted into a position of public trust. Correct political education is absolutely necessary for a nation to effect this oft-praised but hardly-ever-realized outcome.
Popularity actually could facilitate winning the electorate, but it has seldom served this purpose in Philippine history. Where candidates gain public awareness and are acclaimed for being useful to their community and for leading decent personal lives, their popularity could be used to make it easier for a people to attempt the civil education a democratic society must have to survive and endure.
Unfortunately, many other bases of popularity have underpinned the high public awareness of those successfully running for office in this country. Unexamined wealth, ambiguous pedigrees, exaggerated professional credentials and falsified heroic attributes anchor the popularity of many political wannabes.
In far too many cases, their popularity has also resulted from a nation’s understandable disaffection with most people’s perennial loser status. People fudge their harsh, objective reality and image a kindlier one, usually as they sit in dark moviehouses, enthralled by bigger-than-life heroic figures who lead them to a land of promise and a society of fulfillment within roughly two hours. Cinematic figures have marched out of the silver screen and into the golden landscapes of politics quite often, their only credential being the popularity that the public gifts its reel heroes with. Far too often, the gift has been used in betrayal of the generous giver.
In the Philippines, a land of incredible ambiguity, the line between fame and notoriety unfortunately has not been drawn with any degree of propriety. One must not be unfair and limit the results of this neglect only to those who scored in the movies and leave out other arenas which spawned other public officials by first making them popular. Spectator sports, media and the overall entertainment industry have made it possible for scoundrels to walk with heroes, the artsy with the artists, the senile with the senators and, overall, the meretricious with the meritorious in this country.
How can the less than popular win and how can such people – even when they lose elections – still be considered winners?
Those who try to win the electorate by helping people understand the need for conscientious and capable public officials and actually offer themselves to the voters as a genuine choice necessarily win the electorate. The mere presence of this alternative set of candidates will provide the voters with some hope – increasing with time – that there indeed is a credible choice of candidates, not only between the bad, the worse and the worst, but also those who are good and possibly better.
Time is on the side of candidates who persist in giving the electorate a choice. No nation has been able to indefinitely postpone the progress of liberal democratization and Filipinos, while slow learners, cannot be the singular exception.
But there is another heartwarming possibility. For those who would like to see winning the electorate as not also an impossible exercise in winning an election, there is a statistic which has been systematically, perhaps even deliberately neglected, by those preaching uncritical populism.
Taking senatorial elections in this country, one realizes that one can make it to the Senate most of the time with a simple minority vote, about a third of the voter turnout for any given elections. For 2001, that means roughly 10.4 million votes, minimum. Should one desire a little bit more comfort, one might target for the mean winning senatorial votes with 1995 as one’s basis, or about 12.5 million votes come May 2001.
Surely, given an intelligent and focused campaign, these figures do not add up to a suntok-sa-buwan objective. Focused intelligence, current and reliable information, conscientious organization, hard work bringing the voters to the precinct, eternal vigilance during the count and ready people power – all these add up to a winning combination.
Not only for Winnie Monsod, who surveys say is not yet sufficiently popular among the general public, but everyone in her position who can win this May 2001 election and already must be classed a formidable frontliner in winning the electorate of the Philippines.