For the first time in post-martial law history, all the presidential candidates showed up in a nationally televised debate! Yey!! woot-woot, whoo-hoo, awweesome, ♥  ♥  ♥ !
       Despite criticisms on the format, time limit, number of advertisements, exclusion of online news portals, the Comelec pulled off a first: That is, make all presidential bets show up.         For this, the Comelec should be congratulated. (i’ve criticized the Comelec during the past two months for the internal squabbling, the partisanship, and the massive disenfranchisement, but for the holding of the presidential debate, they deserve initial kudos.)
       In Philippine electoral politics, the rule had been: The “frontrunner”, or the perceived frontrunners, never showed up in a debate. This is based on the conventional wisdom (of post-martial law Philippine politicians anyway) that: If the frontrunner was leading by a mile, he/she should not give an inch to the laggards by exposing himself/herself in a debate.
(there were no real elections during martial law, that is, from 1972 to 1986).
      Thus, we never had any real presidential debates in recent memory till last night’s.
      Without detracting from the convincing power of the Comelec, one probable reason all five earnestly participated in the debate is the fact that: Among the three leading candidates there is no real frontrunner — the top three being in an interchanging “statistical tie” for the past two quarters. It’s anyone’s game, every digit counts. Based on the numbers, the top three are (in alphabetical order): Binay, Duterte, Poe; but LP asserts its candidate is also in a statistical tie so let’s just intersperse Roxas in the top three, to be fair.
   

  The conventional wisdom, too, is, a candidate who is at the bottom should be on the offensive, and aggressively take a dig at those on top to prevent plateauing. There is every reason to show up for those who need to claw up.
      Also, maybe it helps that all five are “well-educated”, formal-education-wise (universities not being the sole repository of wisdom), thus, all five probably have the necessary confidence to carry them through a public debate. Three are lawyers (U.P. Law though that is not necessarily a boon, the former dictator and his cohorts having been products of U.P. Law — but so were the brightest anti-dictatorship lawyers) while two acquired their college degrees in the best U.S. universities. But whether or not the debates would influence the Philippine electorate is still unknown. Still, even if Filipino voters were never known to pay much attention to debates, the statistically tied candidates need every inch, every forum, any platform.
      Who won the debate? Rappler has a “panel of judges” composed of their editors, and a group of netizens, who called every round, although their cards and numbers are not transparent, and the netizen polling not scientific. Anyway, here it is (note again, as stated, the empirical basis is not known to us):

Rappler “Editors’ picks per round
PiliPinas 2016 Debate: Round 1 goes to Mar Roxas
PiliPinas 2016 Debate: Round 2 goes to Grace Poe
PiliPinas 2016 Debate: Round 3 goes to Grace Poe
Rappler “Netizens’ picks per round
On social media, Duterte wins Round 1 of the debate
Duterte takes Round 2, Roxas is runner-up for netizens
Consistents winner: Netizens say Duterte takes 3rd round of debate”
       In the U.S presidential debates, CNN and other news programs have a minute-by-minute empirical polling (with a stated margin of error) that shows real-time which candidate was leading in the public opinion polls for every minute that the debate was on-going, and the graph is shown real-time on tv. (This requires a LAN-device for every respondent and therefore logistically demanding; and more complicatedly: Comelec is not legally allowed to poll at this time.) 

     Hopefully, the Comelec has ushered in a new era thru this first ever well-attended presidential debate. For this: Comelec won this round. But the bar is set higher for the next debate, and Comelec should address the criticisms and concerns raised. Here are some of them: “The inability to tackle issues substantially, and the prospect that there may be no fundamental difference in platforms, tells us that one cannot expect too much from the presidential contest in terms of achieving genuine change for the people.”– from Nato Reyes of Bayan. xxx “The debate format did not allow the details of their action plan.” – from media curator Noemi Lardizabal-Dado xxx “we need longer air time with no commercials. Also include a random questions from Netizens and audiences on venue.” –from netizen Rob Refuerzo
     Ok, here it is: the format followed a showbiz Boy Abunda style of questioning (with my compliments to Boy Abunda) by throwing at each candidate the most publicized criticism about him/her,  with 90 seconds to answer. This kind of format emphasized personalities rather than programs and and works well with Boy Abunda’s shows.

     In other words, the format did not draw up the most contentious issues of governance (such as, for example, the poverty-alleviation strategy of dole-outs or CCT/ 4Ps of the government (if the candidate is merely going to continue or improve upon the programs of PNoy’s Daang Matuwid, then he/she does not have any alternative development strategy and merely wants to alternate in power on the convenient, tired, over-used promise that he/she will do better because he/she is a superman/ Supergirl); that’s just one, i have a list here) and for failing to draw up the most contentious  issues of governance, it failed to compel the candidates to draw the line that separates one from the rest, or each from the others.