Stark

The choices are now stark: the presidential battle is exclusively between Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Fernando Poe, Jr.

Last week’s Social Weather Stations survey results surprised none but the politically uninformed. That survey showed Poe leading in the voter preference poll and President Gloria surging powerfully behind him.

Panfilo Lacson, at fourth place, holds on to a stable but marginal share of the vote at 11 percent. He has maintained that percentage share for a year now and will likely do so until May.

There is no factor that could possibly propel Lacson to the main arena of contention save for a radical – and so far unexpected – development: Poe’s disqualification.

Raul Roco, at third place with 19 percent, is the biggest loser in the reconsolidation of voter preference that favors PGMA. Once the frontrunner in the popularity ratings, Roco’s candidacy could quickly evaporate as his voters migrate to the candidate who is in a better position to beat Poe and the regressive politics the actor personifies: Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

The politicians anticipated the two-candidate race we now see indicated by the surveys.

Earlier on, the opposition politicians quickly abandoned the Lacson candidacy and congregated around the movie actor the moment it became apparent he would throw his hat into the ring. Consequently, Lacson was unable to form a vice-presidential and senatorial slate to support his candidacy. This could only reinforce the perception of a lone-ranger candidate shooting from way outside.

From time to time, the Lacson campaign group breaks into the media limelight with charges that the administration is out to persecute their candidate. That makes little sense. From every measure, the Arroyo campaign should be happy Lacson is in the race.

Earlier on, too, major components of the Roco campaign defected to the more viable candidacies.

The defection was led by Senator Rodolfo Biazon, the only viable senatorial candidate on the Roco wing, who moved to the K4 on the last day for filing of candidacies. Leticia Ramos Shahani likewise abandoned the Roco campaign to join the camp of FPJ.

If Lacson has no vice-presidential and senatorial slate to support his candidacy, Roco has a token slate. But that token slate has not convinced the voters that this is a serious coalition with a capacity to win what promises to be a hard and bitter campaign. The turning point from peak to recession in the Roco campaign has to be the choice of his (surprised) running mate Herminio Aquino.

In the face of the derogatory implications of the latest SWS poll results on their presidential candidate, the Roco camp frantically tried to spin a blatant misreading of the numbers: if 27 percent of voters prefer PGMA, then 73 percent of voters want change. That means, Roco’s spin masters vainly try to convince us, that the bulk of voters should now choose between the former education secretary and the movie actor.

That is so self-serving a spin that no one thought it deserved to be repeated.

What is more likely is that 100 percent of Filipinos want change. It becomes a matter now of who could most viably broker that change.

The undeniable fact is that PGMA has momentum, Roco has none.

PGMA has the organization, the message and the machinery to turn back the last-gasp challenge from political zombies from the Marcos and Estrada periods who are now riding on FPJ’s popular appeal. By contrast, Roco, much like FPJ, is trying to muster voter support largely on the basis of a personality cult.

As Roco’s voters migrate to PGMA in order to beat FPJ, we are likely to see the message from the Roco camp to degenerate from bitchy to bitter. That will be even more counter-productive to this candidate’s presidential ambition.

That said, campaign contributors and voters alike will now base their calculation on the survey numbers at hand. Those numbers suggest we have gone past the practical equivalent of the presidential primaries. The battle now takes the form of a run-off election where the two major contending camps seek an outright majority mandate.

An important factor in this battle will be candidate presence. Here things are even more lop-sided.

The K4 has 100 percent candidate presence for all elective posts. As the ruling coalition, it has the ability to field candidates for every elective post open in this election. In fact, there are numerous localities where the local elections will be contested by Lakas, NPC, Liberal and Kampi candidates – all of whom endorsing PGMA.

The KNP, supporting FPJ’s presidential bid, has candidates for less than half of the elective posts. That will matter a lot when the campaign for local posts kicks in. Every candidate in the localities will be mustering a party vote, relying on party workers, poll-watchers and sample ballot distributors.

I have not done the numbers, but it is easy to estimate that Roco’s campaign has less than 5 percent candidate presence. Lacson’s campaign has even less.

That means that when the more intense and passionate logic of local politics kicks in, the campaigns of Roco and Lacson will be snowed under.

There is only one way for the PGMA campaign to go forward from here. It must do campaigning in-depth. It must try to rally constituencies around issues, conduct man-to-man campaigning, aggregate support for local candidates into support for the standard-bearer, convert support for the vice-presidential and senatorial candidates of the K4 into support for the principal contender.

This is what party politics is all about. And this is what makes FPJ’s current 8-point lead seem easily surmountable.

And party politics is the ruling coalition’s most potent weapon. It has the candidate presence and the manpower. It has the program and the issues. It has the ability to define the terms of engagement to its advantage, elbow out the Lone Ranger candidates and clear the decks for a one-to-one confrontation where the choice become most stark to the voters.

When the campaign period actually begins next week, political organization will begin to matter. The final test will be the ability of the contending coalitions to convert popularity into actual votes.

Presidential bids that are unsupported by solid organizations will be blown away.