Column: Isko Moreno’s path to victory

Can the mayor of Manila win the presidency without Mindanao? Published in Rappler on October 19, 2021.

In 2016, Isko Moreno ran for the Senate, as a candidate of Joseph Estrada’s Partido ng Masang Pilipino that was allied with Senator Grace Poe’s Senate slate, called Partido Galing at Puso. He won 11.1 million votes and placed 16th—some 3 million votes behind Leila de Lima, who won the 12th and last Senate seat.

His was a viable candidacy; he was popular, campaigned like a seasoned local politician, and according to official Commission on Elections records, received the most among senatorial candidates in campaign donations. His total of P171 million was about P12 million more than those received by Joel Villanueva and Sherwin Gatchalian, and about P40 million more than the P132 million in campaign funds donated to Francis Tolentino. (READ: Tolentino spent most, Isko Moreno got biggest contributions)

But Villanueva and Gatchalian won; Moreno lost.

Column: Substitution is deception

Two takeaways from COC filing week: Substitution is a cynical gaming of the rules. And the President’s political allies looked lost, frustrated, desperate. Duterte is to blame for both. Published in Rappler on October 12, 2021.

The rule on substitution in election law is common-sensical. If a party candidate dies, withdraws, or is disqualified, the political party should be able to field a replacement if time permits. But President Rodrigo Duterte has turned that benign rule into a malignant loophole.

In the same way that an infrequent legal remedy was used by the Duterte administration to engineer the backdoor ouster of a Supreme Court chief justice, the administration is using the substitution rule to smuggle a presidential candidate through the backdoor. Under Duterte, substitution is the quo warranto of election law.

Digital Media and Philippine Society

The Department of Communication of the School of Social Sciences of the Ateneo de Manila University is launching a seminar series today. If you would like to join the conversation, please sign up here!

The first series features five speakers (it’s my turn on November 10, 2021).

Fittingly, the (new) department chair, Dr. Anjo Lorenzana,
takes the lead in the series.

Column: The Filipino as cross-voter

My first column for Rappler. I try to draw attention to a practice in Philippine elections that isn’t often discussed, and which complicates the picture created by increased political polarization. Published on October 6, 2021.

The polarized nature of much of public discourse these days suggests that political alignments are self-contained, separated from one another in colored silos: red, yellow, orange, white. But in fact the practice of cross-voting, understood not strictly but analogically, is common—so common that millions of voters do it.

Cross-voting is when a member of one party votes for another party. Very few Filipino voters identify as party members, so the borrowed concept is applicable to this common practice only by analogy. Take a look, for instance, at the highlights of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) 2016 exit poll.

“The voters of 2016 ignored the pairings of the candidates even more than in earlier elections,” SWS’s Mahar Mangahas wrote soon after the elections. “As of 2 am on May 10, when the 2016 exit poll sample had reached 62,485 voters from 785 of the 802 VCs [voting centers], the [Rodrigo] Duterte vote percentage had reached 40 points, for a 16-point lead over [Mar] Roxas. Of his 40 points, only 13 came from voters of his cocandidate [Allan Peter] Cayetano; the bulk of 18 came from [Bongbong] Marcos voters, and another 6 were from [Leni] Robredo voters.”

In other words, some 15% of Duterte’s 16.6 million voters voted for Robredo as vice president. That’s almost 2.5 million votes. An astounding number, and given the trolling, turmoil, and tragedy that have overcome public discourse the last five years, somewhat difficult to wrap our heads around.

Column: Yes, Leni

My last column for the Inquirer. Published on October 5, 2021.

I have written, for the record, that Vice President Leni Robredo should be the next president of the Philippines (“VP Leni’s crucial pandemic response,” 5/18/21). My belated reading of Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, that he “isn’t really with the opposition” (“No, Isko,” 9/28/21), only sharpens the argument. Robredo is the only national candidate left standing who can credibly represent the anti-Duterte opposition AND appeal to those who don’t necessarily see themselves as opposition.

That’s a positioning that’s altogether different from Moreno’s emerging third-force strategy, which is based on an appeal to all political forces, including the opposition. The mayor does not seek to represent those opposed to President Duterte; rather, he seeks to represent a broad coalition of reconciliation that also just happens to include the opposition.