Consensus

There is every indication now that the presidential race has broken wide open.

Manila Standard’s latest poll results show President Gloria widening her lead over FPJ by over 10 percent. It is a lead backed up by organizational and logistical superiority. It is a lead that affirms the building momentum of President Gloria’s campaign.

Considering all the other comparative aspects of the campaign, this is a lead that can only widen as we move closer to election day.

From all indications, too, FPJ’s campaign has collapsed. One by one, the groups supporting this campaign are deserting it. It is a campaign deeply in debt, with funding sources drying up quickly.

The most important weakness of this campaign, in the last analysis, has been that it was bereft of imagination. It is a campaign that began strongly, riding the crest of sheer popularity. But it failed, early on, to match that popularity with acute organizational capability and a clear vision voters could cling to.

It is a campaign hampered from the very start by the deficiencies of its main candidate. Severely inarticulate, unfocused and unappreciative of the hard details of leading a campaign, FPJ turned off his own supporters and failed to harness the powers of the media to communicate with the constituencies that supported him.

The constantly aloof movie actor felt little compulsion to deal with local officials who were inclined to support his campaign, forgetting that all politics is ultimately local in character. Undisciplined, he made audiences wait for hours before making an appearance. The word from insiders is that he even stood up potential campaign donors.

People like Tito Sotto, who cornered FPJ early on and found the temerity to assume the role of "campaign manager", ran the campaign like it was promoting a movie premiere. It was all glitz and no substance. The sorties had very little multiplier effect beyond those attracted to be physically present at the rallies.

FPJ and the macho men who enveloped him all underestimated the fact that they were up against a tough and determined woman with great discipline of mind and body. She was in full control of her campaign like FPJ never was.

The campaign led by President Gloria is solid as a glacier. It has moved slowly but surely, gathering strength from organized support and focused constituencies.

It will take a truly calamitous event to alter the dynamics of this present campaign at this late stage. To be sure, there are those men either of great despair or massive ill will currently cracking their brains to precipitate such a calamitous event. As soon as they overstep the bounds of the law, to be sure, they will be quashed.

One such probable event was the May 1 joint rally announced last week by remnants of the Roco camp and the leftist group Bayan Muna. But even that joint rally has collapsed. All parties implicated in this undertaking have backed off, announcing a "postponement." Given the exigencies of the last week of the campaign, that rally will never happen.

Bayan Muna operative Nathaniel Santiago was quoted by Malaya expressing disappointment that Eddie Villanueva’s group offered only "moral support" to the undertaking. It was obvious the leftists wanted not only a large media event to prop up their party list bid using the marginal presidential contenders as mere props, they wanted to milk the politicians as well in exchange for their ability to mobilize a mob.

The leftists were going to mount some cheap facsimile of Edsa 2. Using that as a cover, the rightists were going to attempt yet another coup. This was the scenario brewing last week. But, to the relief of the whole nation, these were separate but converging plans that could ot possible be executed under the circumstances.

As all the other contenders begin to buckle under the pressure of campaigning against the incumbent, a broad consensus will become clearer in the next few days. That consensus is for the continuation of the present leadership and the program of reform it espouses.

All the candidates and all the voters have only one practicable decision to make: either to help broaden that consensus or to imagine it is not there.

We have reached a point where the real decision left is not anymore on who will be the next president but on how strong the electoral mandate and hence the political will of President Gloria will be in pushing the urgent reforms we need to do in order to confront the great challenges facing our people.

The long campaign has established the unworthiness of all the other challengers to undertake the urgent tasks of governance required to bring our country progress. Having established that, all patriotic Filipinos must now contribute to strengthen the mandate of the person on whose shoulders now rest the responsibility of building strong institutions for modern governance of our nation.

We have reached the point where we must now look beyond the chatter of partisan politics and consider the strategic needs of our nation. We need a leadership with a strong mandate to continue her modernizing program of government. We need to concretely establish the detailed points of consensus among our people regarding the priorities of governance.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will govern the nation until 2010.

It is a certainty that has revived investor interest, boosted the stock market and strengthened the peso. That positive response can be improved by holding the most credible elections ever.

She will need the broadest possible mandate to strengthen her hand in dealing with our country’s pressing problems. May 10 will establish the extent of this mandate.

The only role left for the laggards in this presidential contest is either to help establish that broad mandate or to exert even more futile effort to limit that mandate. We have seen a lot of bitterness among those who pinned so much hope on their candidates. That is understandable, considering the emotional momentum of a period of partisanship.

But the time has come for all these partisans to rise above personal ambition and, yes, the dictates of egotism. We do not have to wait too long to begin pulling together as one society.

We can begin pulling together right now. We can begin by calling for a moratorium on hysterical statements being made by the losing candidates and their most fanatical supporters.

President Gloria has assembled an unassailable lead in the voter preference surveys. The matter is virtually settled.

We must begin reinforcing the leadership our voters have preferred to have. That is the dictate of patriotism.