Both have a wide support base with Binay taking advantage of having started his campaign from Day 1 of his Vice Presidency in July 2010 and from the benefits generated from the relationships he has established relative to the sister-city agreements he has forged with hundreds of cities and municipalities throughout the archipelago.
Poe, on the other hand, continues to benefit from the huge popularity of the late movie king Fernando Poe Jr. whom many believed would have won the 2004 presidential elections had not then Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. turned a blind eye to the alleged ballot switching operation at the House of Representatives.
Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte blew into town and swept almost everyone off their feet but the public were turned off as easily as when they idolized him when the tough-talking hizzoner thought that the 105 million Filipinos will bite all the cussing, fussing and filth coming from his mouth.
Duterte had tried to build his campaign by demonizing the current political and social environs to justify his tough stance on criminality and it actually almost worked as it did in Davao City but then the public must have realized that the situation is actually not as bad as Duterte and his spinners have tried to create.
While the statistics for Duterte remains on the high side, the ratings registered by Binay and Poe could only mean that a respectable segment of the voting public have begun their discernment process aided by the fact that the problems of the country are varied and not just confined to peace and order nor is it also the be all and end all of the country’s economic progress.
At the same time, what many may have overlooked from the survey results was the standing of pro-administration candidate former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas who registered a respectable 17% in the Pule Asia survey of Dec. 4-11 and a high 22% in the SWS survey of Dec. 12-14.
Punters will certainly view the rating of Roxas as inconsequential and not worth looking into. But where Roxas is now in terms of his chances in the 2016 presidential polls is exactly the same spot in which then former Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos was in the 1992 presidential elections.
Ramos in fact was not given much of a chance against a very strong field that included the well-oiled campaign machineries of the late Speaker Ramon Mitra, businessman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., and then former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos.
The other candidates at that time - Jovito Salonga, Miriam Defensor Santiago and Salvador ‘Doy’ Laurel - were also regarded as political icons but the cigar-chomping general crisscrossed the country like no one has and slowly built on the initial 7% in the survey ratings after he lost the LDP convention in late-1992, moving up by almost 5% every month such that by the time the campaign period started in February 1992, Ramos was already perched at 15% especially after the then President Cory Aquino decided to formally endorse Ramos’ candidacy.
By the time the final count was made, the votes were almost evenly distributed that Ramos won by plurality with only about 23% of the votes cast against the 19% of Defensor Santiago and the 18% of Cojuangco.
My apologies for retracing the events of the 1992 polls but I thought I needed to because this is similar to the position of Roxas today leading to the May 2016 polls. The 17% in the Pulse Asia survey and 22% in the SWS survey are a good position to be in with a good five months to the 2016 presidential polls.
Roxas is supposed to have come into the 2016 polls as a technocrat armed with the knowledge to continue building on the gains achieved by previous and present administration but his ratings dipped and this could be due to the strategy to sell Roxas to the C-, DE classes, hence there was a natural attempt by his handlers to seize at situations that would allow Roxas to connect with this segment, e.g., driving a nail in a house-build event, riding an underbone motorcycle in the mud, getting wet while conducting traffic under a steady drizzle, and hauling sacks of charcoal.
These photo-ops are good if you are running for a local position. The ‘palengke’ tag was good and it worked and Roxas topped the 2004 senatorial polls cornering 57% of the votes, a good 10% margin over closest rival Bong Revilla who posted 47%. The ‘palengke’ label wasn’t much of an issue as the DTI post was largely engaged in the supervision of basic commodities.
But for next year’s polls, his handlers should not turn Roxas into what he is not. He should not be nudged into blowing the whistle in traffic nor drink from a plate. He is primarily a technocrat. Then he must build upon this image of a technocrat who is armed with solutions on how to lead this country into a world that is not only changing at a very fast clip in terms of advancements in technology and knowledge-based enterprises.
Binay and Poe, on the other hand, will also have to work double-time to keep their pre-poll survey ratings lead. Binay would probably be doing the same thing he has been doing since 2010 and this is the reason why he has a core base of support that ranges from a minimum of 26% to 27% that was reflected in the SWS survey.
Notwithstanding the issues leveled against Binay, his core base of up to 27% will still be there and this is a formidable advantage and the only way you can keep Binay from figuring prominently in 2016 is if the Senate Blue Ribbon sub-committee will wrap up its public hearings and submits its recommendations to the Ombudsman. But this scenario may be too late in the day.
For Poe to win the 2016 polls, she has to hurdle the disqualification cases filed against her and she also has to try and reconnect with the voters in Mindanao where FPJ was highly regarded and also in the three Visayan regions. This becomes necessary in the face of the low ratings she scored in these regions in the Pulse Asia survey of Dec. 4-11.
The rationale is that confusion may have set in among the voters with regards the disqualification cases Poe is tied up with. But another reality is the fact that being new in the game, Poe still has to build her own political base and this can be best achieved by using the various media platforms that are available. But the absence of media strategies in the Visayas and Mindanao regions could only mean that Poe’s media projection in these areas are not enough to make a her presence felt.
Like Binay, Poe has a core base of between 21% to 23% and for her to win next year’s polls she has to raise these figures to a comfortable level and the only way to do it is to redouble her campaign sorties in these areas and to strategize her media campaign in specific areas in these regions as well as generate the firm commitment of political leaders and POs in these regions that can deliver the votes and cut the downtime by skipping the pseudo-political leaders.
The plus side of Poe is she brings a breath of fresh air to the local political scene. Among the candidates, Poe is the only one who remains unsullied by issues that may affect her persona. And despite the negativity directed at her, she has managed to keep her head above the water. She may be a newbie in politics, but Poe has managed to draw attention to her being independent in the way she handled the Senate Committees at which she is the chair person not to discount the fact that the people largely see in her the image of Da King who almost made it in 2004.
With a fat war chest and support of an odd mix of campaign financiers, Duterte will most probably launch a spirited campaign but this may fall short as the campaign progresses and when the voters see there is nothing that Duterte can offer beyond his braggadocio. In the end, the stacks of human rights violations that have been documented by the Human Rights International may eventually affect his campaign especially so that the country’s problems are basically not just about peace and order.
Even the series of surveys conducted by the SWS will show that the primary concern of most Filipinos is lost, unavailable or inadequate income opportunities. In a survey jointly conducted by Data Advisors and The Center, peace and order ranked below that of Livelihood and Income (1), Job Opportunities (2) Health and Sanitation (3), Access to Education (4), Housing and Shelter (5), Delivery of Basic Services (6), and Peace and Order (7) in the way these concerns have been perceived by those polled.
This only shows that the voters will in all likelihood give more weight to any of the candidates in 2016 who will offer programs and or solutions to improve these areas of concerns. At the end of the day, the 2016 polls will be decided along the same lines that were present in 1992 in that the candidate who brings a package of alternatives to the ill-effects of traditional politics of patronage which continues to this day will bring the voters to his/ her side.
Any political exercise is all about winning votes and the key to winning the 2016 presidential elections is for these candidates (a) to keep and protect the votes that they have now, (b) gather and win more votes especially those who are still uncommitted, (c) pull to their side even the committed votes, (d) scan the regions because there are still many areas where the political atmosphere remains volatile, (e) design an archipelagic campaign timeline that is results-driven but cost effective, (f) redesign and review and create an effective message that is compatible to the present-day realities and discard the usual political campaign promises built on non-plausible scenarios, (g) design a communications program that will provide them with the means to effectively communicate their message and agenda (print, radio and tv are the primary platforms but there are other mediums that are similarly effective and cheaper), (h) gain the trust of the electorate and build in them the confidence that they have what it takes to lead this country in a world that is changing each day and, (i) choose the people in whom you will entrust the sample ballots and the brown bag.
But make no mistake about it, all four candidates, in my book, are all in the running for the 2016-2022 presidency because a 10% margin can disappear overnight as a result of gaffes in their campaign. Victory will depend on who among these candidates can send their message across and in whom the people will place their trust and confidence. # # #
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