Are you or are you not running?

Filipinos may be getting impatient with politicians who remain undecided about running for the presidency in May 2004. So far only two of them have publicly announced their joining the presidential derby, former Education Secretary Raul Roco and Senator Panfilo Lacson. Both are clearly benefiting from their transparency with the public on this issue. In Pulse Asia’s April 2003 Ulat ng Bayan survey, Roco remains a top presidential contender, meriting an 18% endorsement from those surveyed; Lacson, on the other hand, has increased his presidential support base to 12%, a tripling of those endorsing him nationwide in November 2002 (4%) before he announced that he was seeking the presidency in 2004.

Another indicator that Filipinos now prefer presidentiables to publicly declare their presidential ambitions is their much reduced support level (12% in April 2003, down by more than a third from 19% in November 2002) for the popular Fernando Poe, Jr.. The highly-regarded actor had already expressed disinterest in the presidency several times, but his associates continue to project him as leaving his options open. The public now appears to have tired of guessing whether he would or would not run and many have turned their attention to other worthies.

President Arroyo has also made a categorical statement renouncing her interest in the 2004 presidential elections. However, with all the palace drumbeaters sounding a clamor for her to reconsider that option and her own "body language" persuading others that she is bent on running for the presidency, the public treats her as another vacillating presidentiable. Thus, her level of support as a possible presidential candidate in April 2003 has remained at 12%, the same as in November 2002.

Yet another presidentiable who pays the cost of perceived political vacillation is former ambassador and now San Miguel boss Eduardo Cojuangco. Without clarifying his presidential intent to a waiting public, Cojuangco suffers a low 1% voter preference in the same Pulse Asia survey. Despite much hard-sell by those who believe he is the man of the hour – the singular personality with the managerial knowledge and willfulness needed to turn the country around – Cojuangco’s continuing indecision appears to abort potential public support and he lags among the presidentiables. So far no academic opinion poll has tracked more than a 7% public presidential preference for him.

The only exception to this tendency for undeclared presidentiables to fare poorly in opinion surveys is Senator Noli de Castro. He does well enough, statistically tying Roco in terms of having about 1 in 5 Filipinos averring a presidential preference for him. It is possible, however, that de Castro’s level of popular support could erode as Poe’s did, as the premium actor failed to more convincingly signal his presidential interest or disinterest.

Why are declared presidentiables doing much better than those who continue to vacillate about the presidency come 2004?

Experiencing much political turbulence in the last two years and suffering legitimacy challenges posed by an increasingly strident political opposition, many Filipinos may now view the 2004 elections as the most crucial instrument in resolving the legitimacy of the current administration as well as the one that might succeed it. Where the sitting President, the Chief Justice and some puisnes of the Supreme Court no less are suspected of unconstitutional behavior, the litmus test of political legitimacy may properly be the people’s sovereign will as expressed in a national election. Faced by candidates identified with the administration or its political opposition, the electorate itself could go beyond a simply legalistic determination of who are the country’s legitimate authorities and national administrators. Effectively, the final political verdict of this country’s sovereign people will be reflected in their choice of winning candidates.

Given this frame of mind, one can understand why there is intense public interest in the elections of 2004 one-and-a-half-years prior to its scheduled conduct. In November of 2002, the median national senatorial fill-up rate — the number of names identified by half of those surveyed by Pulse Asia nationwide as their choice for the Senate – was already an unprecedented 12 names out of a theoretical limit of 12 choices. (As late as half a year before elections, this median senatorial fill-up rate historically had been less than 7 names for the nation taken as a whole and just about 6 to 9 names in the clearly more politicized Metro Manila.)

This perceived criticality of the coming elections may also explain why Filipinos want presidentiables in particular to declare themselves about running or not running way before May 2004. People could be thinking they need more time to assess the relative worth of those who would now contest the country’s highest office.

Having experienced Edsa Dos and Edsa Tres, Filipinos may no longer want to be confronted by political successions that are largely decided on the nation’s clogged streets, by armed forces and judicial authorities that either have lost or retain their confidence in a particular administration or by those eloquent minorities that readily substitute their political judgment for those of a presumably greater and numerically more democratic constituency.

It is quite probable that Filipinos now demand a more constitutionally viable process of choosing their president and other authorities. Now a much wiser and much more mature constituency, they could be insisting that there be greater transparency in the conduct pf their democratic processes — the electoral process in particular — and so they start with pressuring presidentiables to openly declare their intentions

There are actually other reasons that may make sense for the presidentiables themselves to declare their political intentions this early. Most of those reasons have a built-in pragmatic rationale of what eventually would make for a higher probability of a successful presidential bid. However, for the citizenry itself, the best reason has to be that the sooner they get to know their presidentiables better, the better the chance that they will elect a constitutional president that can and will endure longer.