Tag: #juanvote
The noisier the citizenry participate in a debate, the better for expanding electoral democratic space.
The more people post strong opinions on an on-going debate, the better for increasing electoral participation.
The fierier the exchange of words during a debate is, the better for resolving electoral indecision.
Hopefully, light follows fire and heat.
We want more debates rather than less, the outrageous with the reasonable, the witty with the wafty, the perennial pikón with the persistent pitík.
The usual, trite criticism of electoral debates is that these lack substance, or they lack policy discussion. But lack of platform discussion, or even lack of differences in program of government, is inherent in traditional political parties — and it is the nature of elite electoral politics. (Big words).
(Students of history know that the unwritten rule in traditional electoral democracy is that members of the elite alternate in power without changing the basic economic and political framework of government.)
HOWEVER, every generation of enlightened citizenry is more intelligent than the previous one, the patronizing or pejorative “millennial” appellation notwithstanding.
The more debates there are, the more revelations there would be of the character of the candidates, and the nature of the traditional political parties they represent.
If you want the citizenry to spit out and reject the recalcitrant with the corrupt, the incompetent with the inane, the traditional political elite with their traditional billionaire padrinos, saturate them with debates — show the real lack of intelligent choices. These would expose the candidates and the real nature of their parties.
Flood the citizenry with debates, and they will rise up and make the most intelligent choice for our generation. ♣ ♣ ♣
Pls also see other WordPressers’ posts on the theme “Perspective” at:
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):
