Enemies of the people?

Politics, it is often said, is like war. You ask for no quarters and you give none. Since nothing substitutes for victory, one is completely obsessed with winning and all means ñ fair as well as foul ñ are used to ensure victory in political combats.

It is likely that those who refuse to participate in presidential debates view these forums as war games where they must score valiant victories or suffer disastrous defeats. They view their protagonists with utmost calculation, looking into advantages they might have over the others and the disadvantages others might force them to publicly acknowledge.

An incumbent president gains from having a clear track record, but it is also this track record that could clearly identify ineptitude, incompetence and inconsistency. Unless oneís presidential track record is sufficiently indicative of decisiveness, effectiveness and trustworthiness, a public forum for presidentiables could be a veritable state of siege, one where a beleaguered administration and its faltering champion suffer coordinated attacks by temporarily collaborating opposition standard bearers. Best then, for a sitting president to evade this possibly costly situation and instead twit oneís nose at presidentiables who are not worth crossing political swords with.

Among the opposition, there could be presidentiables feel inadequate in publicly discussing the nationís population strategy (if any), economic progress and financial viability, public order and armed rebellions, coups and mutinies, public safety, criminality and related security threats, international relations in a globalized world and other high-profile governance concerns. Cramming sessions cannot sufficiently educate and prepare political tyros for a highly-spirited discussion of critical public issues; the nervous candidate and his prudential handlers understandably must avoid potentially revealing presidential debates.

Other opposition figures may feel up to discoursing on these issues publicly. Still, they may also distance themselves from presidential debates precisely because they cannot score points off a sitting president who refuses to attend them. What matters to them is how much harm they can inflict on the administrationís standard bearer. They would make a sitting president publicly account for every misdeed attributable to her administration, hold her directly accountable for each act of misgovernance and, in the process, gain precious votes at her expense. Since these debates are nationally televised, these presidentiables from the opposition also anticipate a tremendous multiplier effect to boost their electoral chances.

Anytime the president consents to being part of a public debate among presidentiables, her calculating protagonists would therefore make it a point to also participate. Trailing the president in pre-election survey, they surely have little to lose and a world might be gained in making her look politically vulnerable and ñ better still – an inevitable loser.

The sitting president spoils their fun by withholding herself as a sacrificial victim. She refuses to debate and rationalizes her decision by pointing to the non-participation of yet another who may have a world to lose by joining any discussion of national issues that lasts for more than five minutes.

Among presidentiables who reject participation in presidential debates, the notion of the enemy is clearly delineated to include all political competitors. Their unforgiving war will deny any information, block any assistance and forbid any comfort that any of their competitors could gain on the way towards the nationís presidency. From the point of view of these pragmatic presidentiables, any attempt to clarify their strategy of governance once elected, any inkling as regards their past and current performance as political leaders and any indication of their probable capabilities in serving the national interests as a future president must be withheld from other presidentiables ñ all of the latter being certifiable political enemies.

But wait! In rejecting presidential debates, calculating presidentiables also withhold vital information, appropriate assistance and much-deserved comfort to a public that properly aspires to be politically well-informed and to be able to intelligently vote.

Any presidentiable who fails the citizenry in the latterís quest for political maturity cannot be a friend of the people. Wittingly or unwittingly, presidentiables who abort the process of democratic education by rejecting presidential debates lend themselves open to suspicions of being hostile to the national public, a public they conceivably equate with ìthe enemyî.

As of today, among the countryís presidentiables, only former Senator Raul Roco and evangelist Eddie Villanueva show themselves to be truly partial to the publicís interest in knowing their presidential candidates better. The two join each other in discharging a basic responsibility no serious presidential candidate will evade ñ getting the citizenry to know them, to become familiar with them and, in the process, to gain not their contempt but their understanding and political endorsement.

These two are presumably friends of the Filipino people.

The other presidentiables still have to prove themselves. Natural-born or otherwise, in refusing to enlighten the public through presidential debates, they unnaturally seek the presidency and the voting public might do well to treat them as direly needing basic naturalization, a process that no constitutional passage or congressional enactment now provides or even remotely provokes.