Normally a Filipino voter selects a candidate for President of the Philippines on the basis of one or more of the following four criteria, namely academic preparation, experience, professional track record and personality. In the 2016 election the voter will have to consider a fifth criterion—professional integrity—because of the candidacy of an individual who refuses to answer publicly aired charges of corruption.
Academic preparation. All of the five candidates have adequate academic credentials. Three of them—Vice President Jejomar Binay, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Mayor Rodrigo Duterte—are lawyers. Former Senator Manuel Roxas II has a Master’s degree from one of the most prestigious schools. And Senator Grace Poe has a bachelor’s degree in broadcast communication from a well-known US university. No problem for the voter as far as academic preparation is concerned.
Experience. Unquestionably the most experienced of the five Presidential candidates are Mar Roxas and Miriam Santiago. After a brief career in a New York investment house, Mar Roxas was appointed Secretary of Trade and Industry, which he parlayed (as “Mr. Palengke”) into a Senate membership. Subsequently he was appointed to two other Cabinet positions, namely Secretary of Transportation and Communications and Secretary of the Interior and Local Government. Miriam Santiago has held positions in all three branches of the government: the judiciary (as RTC judge), the Executive Department (as Secretary of Agrarian Reform and Immigration Commissioner) and as a senator.
Jejomar Binay served many terms as mayor of Makati City before being elected Vice President. Rodrigo Duterte was a member of the government prosecution service, then practiced law and is currently the long-serving mayor of Davao City. Grace Poe served as chairman of MTRCB (Movie and Television Review and Classification Board) before winning a Senate seat in the 2013 election.
Professional track record. This is the biggest chink in Mar Roxas’ armor because he does not appear to have left large footprints in the three sensitive Cabinet departments that he headed. Miriam Santiago was a courageous RTC judge under martial law, and she has made her mark as a Senator, but she was less than successful as Secretary of Agrarian Reform.
Jejomar Binay’s claim that he made Makati City what it is today is totally without basis, for the undisputed fact is that it was the Zobel de Ayala business conglomerate that developed Makati’s cogons and rice fields into the financial powerhouse that it now is. Indeed, there remains a progress disparity between the Makati barangays that have been touched by the Ayala development prowess and the barangays that have not. Binay likes to speak of “what we did in Makati” but it was the Ayala conglomerate, not Binay and Co., that did it.
Rodrigo Duterte has not held a national office, but he can at least claim that Davao City—unlike Makati City—is virtually free of crime. And whatever freebies he has been able to give the Davao City citizenry have been the fruits of his own efforts, not those of a private land developer.
Grace Poe ran a tight MTRCB ship when she headed it, and she is widely believed to have done a good job of chairing last year’s Senate hearings on the Mamasapano massacre.
Personality. Undoubtedly the candidate who is scoring the most points in the personality stakes is Jejomar Binay. Marketing himself as Nognog, the height-challenged Vice-President shakes any hand that he can reach and dives into every so-called boodle fight. The next most simpatico candidate is the mayor of Davao City. Rodrigo Duterte’s franck and earthy language and down-to-earth demeanor has been resonating well with the crowds that she has been addressing, especially the Cebuano-speaking groups. Try as she does to not do so, Grace Poe comes across as schoolmarmish and unexciting. Mar Roxas’ dry and uncharismatic persona is undoubtedly one of the main reasons why he continues to languish in the No. 3 position in the preference polls surveys.
Personal integrity. Voters in the coming election will have to consider one more criterion than usual—personal integrity—because of the inclusion of Vice President Jejomar Binay among the candidates. Where suspicion of corruption is concerned, the four other candidates enjoy clean bills of health. Binay, on the other hand, has staunchly refused the slew of serious charges of official wrongdoing—dismissing them airily as electoral persecution—leveled against him by his close subordinates in the Makati City administration that he headed. The voters will consider a mix of the above criteria when they go to the polls on May 9. In the cases of candidates Roxas, Santiago, Poe and Duterte, they will only have four criteria to consider. In the case of Binay, they will have to consider the additional criterion of personal integrity.
Let’s see which mix of the above-stated criteria they will consider foremost in their choice of President of the Philippines. And let’s see whether they will accord heavy weight to the additional criteria of personal integrity in the case of the Vice President.