INQUIRER.net Eleksyon 2007

Poll loss of showbiz people a sign RP voters maturing

Inquirer

Norman Bordadora

MANILA, Philippines -- The dismal performance of movie and TV personalities in the ongoing canvass of votes for 12 senators show the Filipino electorate has moved “a small step” closer to political maturity, social scientists from top Philippine universities said on Friday.

The experts nonetheless agreed that even with comic former Senator Vicente Sotto III and actors Cesar Montano and Richard Gomez faring badly in the polls despite their fame, the recent elections still centered on personalities instead of on issues and proposed reforms.

"There’s a forward-movement," Catholic priest Father Romeo Intengan of the Ateneo de Manila University Center for Strategic Studies said in an interview. "Being a celebrity is no longer a decisive factor in winning an election. You also have to have a track record of performance and ideas for reform."

As 5:15 a.m. on Friday, the National Movement for Free Elections had Montano of TEAM Unity at No. 17 with 1.357 million votes, Sotto also of TU at No. 18 with 1.162 million, and independent Gomez at No. 26 with more than 397,000 votes.

In contrast, movie actors Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, Ramon “Bong” Revilla, Jr., and Lito Lapid easily barged into the top dozen of senatorial candidates in the 2004 elections. Estrada ran as an oppositionist, Revilla and Lapid as administration bets.

"We have a culture of people running for office despite a blatant lack of qualification and whose reason for being on a (party) slate is being well-known," Intengan said.

Intengan said the "forward movement" toward maturity even resulted in boxing hero Manny Pacuiao getting severely out-pointed in his battle for a congressional with incumbent South Cotabato Representative Darlene Custodio.

Despite his hero persona, Intengan said, Pacquiao failed to project himself as a serious candidate with fresh ideas for governance.

"When he was interviewed on TV, he was obviously inarticulate," Intengan said.

Jose Abueva, former University of the Philippines president and political science professor, told the Inquirer that Filipinos have learned from their disappointing experience with actors in government, including jailed leader Joseph Estrada and the father of the incumbent Revilla, Senator Ramon Revilla Sr..

"We’ve tried Joseph Estrada and he was a grave disappointment. He was not really what he wanted the people to know him to be. He was so corrupt and the people were disillusioned," Abueva said. "We, in UP, voted for him. He said he was for the masses and that he was for the poor. It turned out that he was only for himself."

Abueva then identified "the old man" Revilla, Lapid and local basketball legend Robert Jaworski as among the senators who disappointed the public with their respective stints in the Senate.

"They had nothing to contribute. They had no reform idea," Abueva said.

"I would say it was a very small step," he said when asked if the actors’ failure to easily win seats in the Senate indicated a move towards maturity.

Abueva said that not all movie and TV celebrities were incompetent in the realm of elective public service.

He said, however, that some of them may have been caught up in the debacle suffered by celebrity-candidates because of the unsatisfactory showing of actors and actresses previously elected to public office including the presidency.

"I was supporting Cesar Montano. I believe he is a capable man who managed to make a difference with the movies he made," Abueva said. "But he lost because of the general disrepute of actors and actresses in government."

Prior to the elections, actor-comedians Jun Urbano and Leo Martinez embarked on a public awareness campaign against the wisdom or the lack of it in choosing a TV or movie personality for public office.

Despite the lessons from the country’s past experience with below-par actor-elective officials, Intengan and Abueva said the Philippines is still far from being mature politically.

"Political maturity is a broad term. In the constitutional democracies in Europe, political parties are formed based on ideological dynamics. We still don’t have that here in the Philippines," Intengan said.

"People still went for personalities. There was no focus on reforms. It was all about the good guys and the bad guys, our people and their people. There was nothing about structural and institutional change," Abueva added.

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