No Deus ex Machina in Manila – ISN
May 7th, 2010
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=115980
A Presidential race depicted as a run-off between a saint, a CEO and a faded movie-star is being overshadowed by worries over a computerised vote-counting system.
On the way out: Arroyo billboard near old city of Intramuros in Manila (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Simon Roughneen in Manila – In a first for The Philippines – a country with intermittent electricity supply and a history of electoral fraud – a computerised system is being used instead of the manual count used in most other countries. Despite 11th-hour glitches meant the recall and re-programming of 76000 flash cards used to scan votes in the optical scan machines, the electoral oversight body (Comelec) remained confident that “the elections will go through”, according to Comelec chair Jose Melo.
Whether the equipment will be ready and distributed across the whole archipelago in time, remains to be seen. However Comelec is resisting calls from candidates and media to conduct a manual count in parallel and as a back-up to the computerised alternative.
The ‘saint’ in question is Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino, son of former President and democracy icon Cory, who died in August 2009. A poll published this morning Friday put Mr Aquino on 41%, over double that of the second-place candidate. Aquino has capitalised on the family lineage – an aura of martyrdom, heroism and clean hands that dates back to the 1986 People’s Power Revolution – in a country listed by Transparency International as more graft-prone than Pakistan or Liberia.
The saintly epithet was applied – ruefully and sardonically – by the ‘CEO’ rival candidate Manny Villar. His rags-to-riches story puts him at odds, he feels, with Aquino, who comes from a political dynasty rooted in the Filipino landed elite. Speaking at a rally on Thursday, Mr Villar recounted, as seven year old, helping his mother selling fish at a market, in contrast to Aquino’s aristocratic background. This is in turn belied by Noynoy Aquino’s unassuming demeanour and apparent disinterest in wealth. The encouraging paradox is that these attributes that make him stand out from the usual ostentation of Filipino politics.
Villar has president of the Senate since 2006. He touts himself as the builder of US$220m per annum business, saying that he can do something similar for the Philippines, which is has seen overall levels of poverty increase over the last decade, even as the economy grew by around 5% per annum on average.
Is Villar a new type of politician? Or a self-made Thaksin-esque figure ready to challenge an oligarchy? Some say yes, some say no. Already a long time Senator, “his wealth has elevated him into the elites”, according to Eugene Martin. This is a criticism made of Thaksin by those in Thailand who opposed his administration and resented his nouveau-riche brashness. Martin, an ex-US diplomat and former executive director of the USIP Philippine Facilitation Project, sees Villar as pitching his wealth as positive. He thinks that it “allows him to not depend on contributions from interest groups and individuals, but you don’t see signs of new voices or ideas.”
“I will foster a very competitive environment and demand results,” Villar says. Mr Aquino, by contrast, is deemed a less-dynamic figure, with few accomplishments of note during his political career to date. However, he has been assertive on the campaign trail, successfully-tarnishing Villar as having at least tacit support from the deeply-unpopular incumbent, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Arroyo’s own party candidate Gilberto Teodoro languishes in fourth place, and seems out of the running.
On the way in? Aquino supporters in Quezon City (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Villar’s glossy and expensive TV-oriented campaign has not paid off, it seems, and “Villarroyo”, as Aquino has dubbed him, looks set to finish a distant second. It might get worse: if the swing in opinion shown in recent polls is maintained on May 10 when Filipinos go to the polls, he may cede the runners-up slot to former President Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada, an aging, high-living movie star who made his own political career partly out of an image of being in touch with the common man. Friday morning’s poll put Mr Estrada at 20%, one point ahead of Villar.
But Estrada personifies a chutzpah that runs through politics in The Philippines. Ousted in 2001 by the People’s Power II street protests, ‘Erap’ did time afterwards for corruption offences and abuse of office. Nonetheless, he is a live candidate, and is not alone in shrugging-off a controversial history. Imelda Marcos, widow of Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator driven from power in 1986, is chasing a Congressional seat.
She will be joined by another formidable matriarch of Filipino politics – outgoing President Arroyo. Feet on the street brought her into office as a replacement for Estrada, but her nine-year administration has been marred with controversy, most notoriously the “Hello Garci” scandal in 2004. Seeking re-election, she was recorded discussing her presumed victory with the then Comelec head, before the votes had been counted. Getting away with that and alleged widespread vote-buying on Mindanao, she spent much of 2009 pushing a constitutional amendment that would switch the country from a Presidential to a parliamentary system of government. Prevented from running again for President, Arroyo is running for parliament now, though the failure of her constitutional reform gambit means that she cannot retain power in a Putin-esque switch of roles to Prime Minister.
However she is hoping to acquire enough allies in parliament and the judiciary to set up a de facto opposition to the next President. Whether this works out remains to be seen. In the country’s ephemeral and personality-oriented party system, MPs often seek links with the President. If Noynoy is a clear winner, she may struggle. Eugene Martin believes that the “almost universal hatred she has generated will undermine her efforts to build an alternative power base. But it also depends on who is elected and his ability to attract political support.”
However election hopes are being tempered with what cynical Filipinos might term a conspiracist reality. The credibility of the process coming under question, as Comelec and Smartmatic/TIM – the company that won the tender to implement the hi-tech ballot system – struggle to get the computerised system ready on time. The word on the street – a theatre for some of The Philippines most evocative and dramatic political moments in the past – is cynical and dead-pan. “I hope you have sharp eyes”, said Carl, a shopkeeper close to the Makati Central Business District, speaking to me on Thursday evening. “One way or another, votes can go missing here, or appear from nowhere”.
According to a nationwide poll published on April 16, 71% of Filipinos believe vote-buying will take place in their own precincts. Some 51% expect cheating in counting votes, 48% believe there will be “flying voters,” or those who go from precinct to precinct to vote multiple times. 45% expect voter harassment and 37% expect violence . Nonetheless, turnout is predicted to be 75-80%, high by any standards.
But under the shadow of an untried and so far faulty computer system, fears are growing that the real outcome might be undermined, and the electorate traduced. Noynoy has threatened to take to the streets if flaws or irregularities are detected. Does that mean he will invoke People Power if he does not win, an outcome he must feel is now almost certain? Speaking on Thursday he said, “If we have a correct counting of the votes, I think we will be very victorious.”
So it seems. But if elected, even in a landslide, can the low-key and apparently-humble scion of two national heroes emerge as the long-awaited national saviour? Beatification may be premature, however, as irrespective of good intentions, it may be beyond Aquino to carry-out effective reform of how politics is conducted and the economy structured.
If change is coming, it may be in the future. There are some ‘young turks’ coming through, according to Mon Casiple, Executive Director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Manila. Even though most of the candidates are from traditional political families, there are “more and more young generation politicians taking over from the older, more traditional politicians”, as Casiple put it to me.
Even so, a big Aquino win might not be enough for him to push a reformist programme. Based at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank that analyses international relations across Asia, Malcolm Cook is a long-time watcher of politics in The Philippines. He is pessimistic about Aquino’s prospects, telling this correspondent that “most see him as not a forceful figure, though I think he is the best of the three main candidates”.
Even his late mother, who had a mandate to take the country in a new direction after 1986, is regarded as having done too little – or perhaps been unable to untangle or challenge the vested interests that remain dominant in The Philippines. So, even if the new computer system fails, the country has other structures that work only too well, and to the detriment of the tens of millions of poor scattered across the country. As Mr Cook said “it is really more the system in the Philippines rather than who wins in it that is important and the root of the country’s deep political problems.
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