‘It’s the estate tax, stupid.’
Last week I drew on the political experience of the United States to illustrate a point regarding this country’s coming election, namely the finding by a major opinion-survey institution that one of the candidates for the presidency, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., enjoyed a commanding lead over his nearest rival, Vice President Leni Robredo.
I reminded Manila Standard readers eligible to vote on May 9 – and the rest of this country’s voting population – of the US presidential election of 1948, in which Democratic incumbent Harry Truman, who after having been declared the likely loser by the opinion-survey industry, humiliated the pollsters by defeating the popular and highly competent Republican candidate, New York governor Thomas Dewey. That colossal blunder of the opinion-survey industry is still remembered by American politicians today, almost eight decades after its occurrence.
For this column I’m going to draw on another piece of American political experience to drive home a point related to one of the issues that have been raised against the fitness of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to be president of the Philippines.
The 1992 US presidential election saw the ambitious young Democratic governor of the southern state of Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton, challenging the re-election bid of President George H. W. Bush. Clinton’s campaign strategists determined that the biggest weakness of Mr. Bush’s platform was the US economy, and so they wrapped the governor’s campaign strategy around that issue – more precisely, the weak state of the world’s No. 1 economy. “It’s the economy, stupid!” quickly became the slogan of the Clinton campaign. As history now shows, the catchy slogan became the spearhead of the Arkansas governor’s successful challenge to Mr. Bush’s reelection bid.
The Bush people could immediately have stood up and angrily declared “It’s all about politics.” Or a key supporter of the incumbent president could have branded as “rotten politics” the conversion of the US economy’s weakness into an electoral issue.
But they did not. For then, any issue relating to a candidate’s fitness for the position sought by her or him is perfectly legitimate politics.
I am citing the “It’s the economy, stupid!” episode in American political history because of the reaction of the camp of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to the introduction of his family’s tax delinquency – more precisely, his family’s continued unwillingness to settle the P203 billion tax on his father’s estate – into the public’s discourse on his fitness to be a presidential candidate. The Bureau of Internal Revenue’s P23-billion assessment was declared final and executory by the highest court in the land. The ballooning of the Marcos estate’s liability is indicative of the length of time that the liability has remained unsettled.
Marcos’ campaign spokesman has made the following statement: “It’s not a coincidence that rivals of presidential frontrunner Bongbong Marcos are raising this matter in unison a few weeks before the election; sadly, this is all about politics.”
Ferdinand Jr.’s sister Imee has fulminated thus: “Why did (the estate tax case) suddenly come out? Indeed, they are just trying to destroy Bongbong. This is rotten politics.”
Being a non-lawyer, Senator Imee Marcos may or may not understand the meaning of the Latin phrase “non sequitur,” but Bongbong’s spokesman, a lawyer, certainly does. What the senator and the spokesman have said on the estate tax case have been non-sequitur statements. “It does not follow” – the meaning of the phrase – that an imputation or charge against a candidate constitutes bad politics just because it is made during an electoral season.
Raising the issue of your family’s long-unsettled estate tax liability is not “rotten politics,” Senator Imee. It is perfectly good politics. Did you want the Filipino people to vote your brother into the presidency ignorant of the fact that your father’s estate, of which your brother has long been the co-administrator, has owed the BIR at least P23 billion since 1997? Keeping the Filipino people ignorant can hardly be right, Senator. And what better time to raise the issue than this time, when the voters are reaching a decision on who is fit to become this country’s next president?
A candidate whose family is unwilling to settle its tax liabilities to the government – and who does not believe in filing an income tax return is not fit to be president of the Philippines.
Raising the issue of a candidate’s unpaid estate tax liability is good politics, not just in April 2022 but at any time.
Were the Marcos estate tax case happening in America in 1992, Bongbong Marcos’ rivals would have told his supporters: “It’s the estate tax, stupid.”
