Tag: 2016 elections
(This blog site is not endorsing any presidential candidate at this time…)
Breaking News: Gina Lopez of ABS-CBN Foundation endorses Duterte for President in Karen Davila’s show this morning, video here, below:
To be fair and accurate about it: the topic of the show this morning was mining, and the guest is a known environmentalist who also opposes mining in an island ecosystem such as the Philippines as it poisons our water systems. Karen Davila being the broadcast journalist that she is, segued to the presidential candidates — so that’s how the interview progressed.
Before posting this, i made a quick internet search for verification, and true enough, she (Gina Lopez) had a speaking engagement three days ago, and when asked about the presidential elections, she gave an answer to this effect, and it was posted in FB by a member of the audience and it became a fever, este, er, viral. Less than an hour after Karen’s interview, it was already in YouTube, here it is:
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):
