Now let’s get to the messages of this campaign. Officially, it’s but 95 days before E-Day. As previously stated in previous articles on this page, it’s a four-way fight, and it’s still anybody’s game. Exciting.
In Monday’s article, I described how Noynoy’s numbers dropped from 54 to 36 in a matter of three to four months. And how Villar’s gradually went up to 34 from 18, in statistical dead heat by the start of the official campaign period.
In the latest surveys, Binay is ahead at 31, Poe, Duterte and Roxas are statistically tied at 24, 21, and 20, more or less. Everyone says Binay has “recovered.”
The strategy of letting the ads do the talking (“Ang iba nangangako pa lang, si Binay ginawa na”; Nognog and Pandak), while quietly moving from barangay to barangay, pumping flesh, doing “boodle” fights with the poor, and forbidding his children and cantankerous spokespersons from opening their mouths seems to be paying off. All ads have the magic ingredient—“kurot sa puso.”
But can the strategy be sustained in the next 95 days? Can “no talk, no mistake” be, as the young ask, “forever”? Already, negative ads aired in the last few days, asking Binay to come clean and explain his side on the corruption charges against him and family.
What the voters may have forgotten, and Binay’s American handlers cleverly want many to forget, some handlers from the opposing camp want people to remember. Will it work?
Negative campaign ads have not really been tried in this country, unlike in the US of A where it has been commonplace starting from the 60s. Look at the hard-hitting messages of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders vis-à-vis Clinton’s, Rubio’s and Cruz’s. The radicals versus the conservatives versus the middle-roaders.
Now, take the other most moneyed candidate. Without veering away from the “daang matuwid” escutcheon (neither PNoy nor the trio of Dinky, Ging and Henedina, as well as their Lea Navarros and Jim Paredeses will ever allow that), Mar pictures himself now as the quiet plodder, the worker (trabaho lang), who will correct the “pagkukulang kung meron” of the holy “daan,” and even do better. He tried an ad which gave a veiled threat to recipients of the CCT program if “daang matuwid” is discontinued by the “wrong” winner, but that didn’t seem to sell, especially after PNoy vetoed the increase in SSS pensions.
Mar’s latest monologue on TV and radio is an improvement over previous selling spiels. Yet on radio last Saturday, a wag said: “Wala namang nagsasabing tamad si Roxas. Trabaho nga siya ng trabaho, mula DOTC hanggang DILG. Kaya lang, lahat palpak.” Wow—solar plexus!
The same may be said of Binay’s “sino pa ba ang magtutulungan kundi tayo?” while looking at the masa in the frame. As his main competitor now resurrects the corruption allegations in negative ads, will the people remember? And how strong is the hope that the masa will fortify their perception of “lahat naman yan magnanakaw…kay Binay inaambunan tayo.”
As for Duterte, there was an attempt at “kurot” with his Tapang at Malasakit TV ad which aired for two weeks or so mid-year of 2015. Balancing the “tapang” was a compassionate message, that in Davao, the poor are cared for, the future of the youth secured.
But after his numbers zoomed and the papal infraction spewed from his unguarded mouth, Duterte seems to have reverted to his “siga-siga” image. Singular in his message of being tough against crime and drugs, Duterte is now seen as a uni-dimensional leader. Voters may be wondering: Is there anything else he can do?
Being a toughie has both mental and emotional connotations. Think Robin Padilla, even Erap. Now Mar seeks to equate Digong’s “tapang” with bullying, rather than courage.
For sure, his competitors will hit Duterte hard on human rights, the “womanizing,” the dirty mouth. He has somehow admitted these in legally but not politically correct manner, and so he hopes the public mind has been sufficiently “inoculated.” Maybe so. Maybe not yet. He eschews an image make-over which he claims some friends have advised, something refreshing for a national candidate. What you see is what you get. Love him for it, or hate him, the man does not give a hoot. His problem is how he can break the voter “ceiling” for those fed up with the system and want radical change.
Mar did “pitik” by saying in his ad, “hindi ako paawa (Grace Poe), hindi ako siga-siga (Duterte), hindi ako nag-abuso (Binay). And a double whammy against the survey leader…“hindi ko kayo nanakawan.”
Does it have the “kurot sa puso” element? No, it’s still asking the voter to think. To reason instead of being swayed by emotion. Mar, after all must have learned his lessons from previous ads that failed to resonate. After the Mr. Palengke soft-sell commercial that made him Numero Uno senador in 2004, connecting to the heart has never been his strong suit. Probably best to forget it, and hit the minds instead, or so his handlers may be telling him.
And Senadora Gracia? Still trying to connect to the “puso” of the voter. First it was memories of FPJ, her adoptive father. Then it was “pity the foundling.” Then images of the elderly in hospitals, the lumpen, the harried and hassled MRT commuter. But rolling her immaculately white sleeves did not seem to resonate. It ain’t as easy.
Now she still focuses on her travails before the high tribunal magistrates. Her PR team spread wide the “heart” arguments of Justices Marvic Leonen and then CJ Maria Lourdes Sereno. Associate Justice Leonen even made that “justice instead of legalist” tagline, with “just” as the root word of justice. I am no Latin expert (why bother? Only theologians and lawyers still try to decipher the dead language), but isn’t “justitiae” or justice the root word itself, not “just” being root for justice?
And Poe’s latest ads proclaim her fighting for her political rights as “lumalaban” (“Akala ni Duterte siya lang ang palaban,” her propagandists must have thought), pero “may puso.”
The problem of the senadora is more basic. Her audience is the highest magistracy of the land, not yet the voters.
She pines for the magistrates’ soft hearts for foundlings, and adherence to that non-legal maxim of “vox populi est vox Dei,” maybe in the hope that the case will be dribbled and that the justices will let the voice of the people overwhelm their sense of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold and re-affirm.
She and her handlers forget two things: One, that her survey numbers have gone a-tumble, so for those who might be swayed by populism—well, the proof of the pudding is in the numbers. There won’t be any public unrest if the magistrates interpreted the Constitution in letter and not by taking an emotional detour.
Two and more telling, the Constitution of 1987 was overwhelmingly ratified by the people. Sixty-five percent of the population versus 35 said yes, if memory serves me right. Can anything be more vox populi than that? How now would her survey numbers in the mid-20s be considered vox populi by the justices?
Still and all, expect surprises. It’s a wide-open contest, and until the legal variables are decided (DQ cases), forecasting the outcome will still be very iffy.