IN THE 1992 US presidential campaign, which pitted Bill Clinton against reelectionist George Bush (the elder), Clinton’s camp focused on the recession plaguing the country, while Bush was riding high on his successful handling of the war in Iraq. Thus the Clinton slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Bush lost.
In the 2010 Philippine elections, corruption was the main focus of the Aquino campaign, linking Manny Villar and outgoing Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. While the message certainly resonated with the voters, it is interesting to note that, in spite of the emotional attachment to the late Cory Aquino, reflected in a 46.2percent SWS rating that Noynoy Aquino enjoyed in December 2009, this dropped to 42percent in January 2010 and 36 percent in February. On the other hand, in spite of the Senate investigation of the C5 issue against Villar, he continued to hold his own with 27percent in December, 35percent in January and 34percent in February, nearly matching Aquino.
As the 2016 presidential contest nears, political strategists, specifically those determined to cut down the lead of Jejomar Binay in the public opinions polls, are resorting to the same message used against Villar.
But what these strategists may be overlooking is the difference in the “marketing environment,” to use a term that marketing and advertising practitioners use.
In 2010, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had virtually become the epitome of graft and corruption, after several years of continued battering in the media, fueled by very high profile cases of alleged official thievery. The image of Arroyo as the Evil Queen became sharper with the death of Cory Aquino and her personification as the Epitome of Honesty. This, quite expectedly, rubbed off on her son when he agreed to run for president.
Riding on the anti-corruption high horse – expressed by the slogan, “Kung walang korap,walang mahirap” – Aquino should logically have trampled Villar in the dust, considering that the latter was beleaguered in the Senate and facing an official censure over the C5 issue.
But Villar, as research figures indicate, continued to hold his own. Some may attribute this to the massive advertising and communications efforts that the Villar camp mounted. But the Aquino camp was not exactly invisible.
It took a clever association of Villar with the much-maligned Arroyo, (i.e., tagging him Villarroyo) thus “personifying” the image of corruption, to finally erode Villar’s poll ratings.
In the March 2010 SWS poll, Aquino’s ratings rose to 37percent while Villar’s dropped to 28percent. In April, Aquino gained another point while Villar dropped two points to 26percent. And in May, the month of the elections, Aquino surged to 42percent while Villar dropped to 19percent, being overtaken by Erap Estrada with 20percent.
The Estrada phenomenon is worth noting. As far as the media and civil society are concerned, Estrada ranks alongside Marcos and Arroyo in terms of being corrupt. Yet public opinion polls have indicated consistently that the masses do not agree. In fact, I observed, in one analysis, that Aquino failed to garner a plurality of votes in 2010. If a run-off election had been mandatory, as it is in many Western countries, he would have had to go through a second round of voting, this time, against Estrada. I then asked the rhetorical question: Who knows that Estrada would have won?
Going into the 2016 polls, another variance in the “marketing environment” is the fact that the simon pure image of the Aquino administration has been significantly tarnished.
In one Pulse Asia survey, 67percent of respondents expressed the belief that “corrupt practices during the Arroyo administration involving the PDAF continued under the Aquino administration.” In the same survey, 59percent of respondents believed that “politicians were using the PDAF to get themselves and their relatives elected” and had used it as “an opportunity to receive bribes and commissions.”
In a 2013 SWS survey among executives of 951 enterprises in the National Capital Region and key cities, “those seeing ‘a lot’ of corruption in the public sector rose to 56percent from 43percent in 2012.
In sum, as one analyst pointed out, for the forthcoming elections, corruption may be a “default” issue – something that voters associate with politicians as a whole. In marketing terms, underscoring a parity quality in a brand (e.g., a bank is dependable) does not provide a competitive edge. Worse yet, since a politician is, by definition corrupt (particularly exemplified by the plunder of PDAF and DAP), using corruption as a campaign issue could simply “wake up sleeping dogs” and call attention to the proponent’s own vulnerability.
Alongside the corruption issue and not being paid enough attention by the political consultants is the issue of competence.
Over the past four years, the Aquino government has been portrayed by the media as the epitome of incompetence. This has been drummed in by daily media reports on the breakdown of the MRT and LRT, the spoilage of relief goods intended for typhoon victims, the glacial pace of rehabilitation and reconstruction in the areas destroyed by nature’s fury, the reported crime wave, exacerbated by police officers committing the crimes themselves, the horrendous traffic problem, the congestion in the port area and its impact on the economy, and the highly-publicized portraits of Mar Roxas and DOTC Secretary Joseph Abaya as poster boys of incompetence, as well as the unkind portrayal of Noynoy Aquino as being clueless and out of his elements.
The same analyst who pointed out that corruption is a “default” issue, took a page from the Clinton campaign: “It’s competence, stupid.”
For the long suffering Filipino masses, chief of them the hapless residents of Zamboanga, Tacloban, Samar and Bohol, incompetence is, in fact, the reason for their miseries. But I think that competence is not the only issue. There is the issue of compassion, too.
When a businessman in Tacloban, who had a close brush with death, complained to Aquino about it, the president of the Philippines and purported Father of the Country, shot back dismissively: “You didn’t die, did you?”
Such a cold-blooded, heartless response in the midst of death and destruction, when the caring, gentle, reassuring voice of a leader is so badly needed, underscores the lack of compassion in this government.
When the presumptive official candidate of the party in power, Mar Roxas, bluntly told the mayor of Tacloban, who was appealing for help from the national government, “Bahala kayo sa buhay niyo” because the mayor balked at signing an “official request” for relief, that underscores the lack of compassion of someone who aspires to become president of 100 million mostly poor Filipinos.
When the economy is making great progress and making businessmen wealthy and the rich richer, while leaving the masses jobless and hungry, Pope Francis himself would conclude that compassion is, indeed, lacking in the equation.
To a political strategist, corruption is the line of least resistance in an election campaign. If it worked before, why shouldn’t it work now?
My own advice is: It’s competence and compassion, stupid!
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