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.

Column: No, Isko

Column No. 666, published on September 28, 2021.

As it turns out, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno isn’t really with the opposition. The premise of the 1Sambayan convenor process was the search for a unifying presidential candidate who would oppose Dutertismo and its awful, consequential changes. My own summary of these changes include the so-called war on drugs, which has led to thousands of extrajudicial killings; the pivot to China, which has created an unpatriotic presidency subservient to Beijing; and the continuing rehabilitation of the Marcoses. To those opposed to the Duterte regime, the evidence for these changes is already established, the fact-finding already painstakingly done. After all, the Duterte presidency is already past its fifth year.

To hear Moreno speak after he announced his presidential candidacy, however, the existence of these changes, and especially their consequences, remain matters to be investigated. That betrays his political colors: If he were truly in the opposition, he would welcome the decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court to formally investigate President Duterte for crimes against humanity. If he were truly in the opposition, he would criticize the President’s subcontracting his foreign policy to Beijing, and would not offer such a non-patriot a seat in his cabinet. And if he were truly in the opposition, he would not pretend that his friends, the Marcoses, were somehow the victims who have been prevented all these years from adequately explaining their “side.” 

Why did the 1Sambayan convenors include Moreno, whose real last name is Domagoso, in their list of candidates? I can hazard a couple of guesses: First, the mayor’s increasingly pointed criticism of the national government’s pandemic response made him a sympathetic figure. It didn’t hurt his image when he started criticizing the attempts to crown the President’s daughter, Sara Duterte Carpio, as the heir apparent. Second, the convenors, or at least some of them, wanted the popular, charismatic ex-actor to BE opposition. In that sense, they were only reflecting the opinion of many.

But if anyone in the real opposition is still unclear about Moreno’s political positioning, just consider his view on the incarceration of Sen. Leila de Lima. He accepts the ostensibly objective view that the matter is now completely with the courts; if he were truly with the opposition, he would know, first, that her cases were politically motivated and that, second, he should rush to repair the injustice. Instead, we get pabulum: “If … Senator Leila de Lima can avail such right, she should be given that kind of right.”

In talks I’ve given before different audiences, including diplomats, I classified three types of prospective presidential candidates for 2022: continuity candidates like Sara, change candidates like Vice President Leni Robredo, and career candidates like Sen. Manny Pacquiao. No real need to define the first two, but the third one requires an explanation. There are candidates like Pacquiao and former Sen. Bongbong Marcos who will regard 2022 as their best chance to become president; in other words, 2022 is a career opportunity.

As his last fight proved, Pacquiao is nearing the end of his illustrious career as a boxer. There can’t be too many big-ticket fights left. A clearheaded review of his lackluster, almost non-existent political career should lead to an inevitable conclusion: his chances of rising to higher office are dependent on his continuing boxing fame. Given that, and given that his money is still (largely) intact, it would make sense for him to run for president in 2022. 

If Marcos runs for president next year, he would likely have the support of an incumbent president; if that support is total, it may be good for two or so million votes. He would be 65 next year, his father died at 72; the difference is about the length of a presidential term. Not the least of his considerations: Next year is the 50th anniversary of the declaration of martial law. What better way to seal his family’s rehabilitation than to be the commander in chief who presides over that anniversary? (For these reasons, I think Marcos will in fact run for president.)

In my classification scheme, I placed Moreno in all three categories. Some in the opposition believed that he was genuinely with the opposition; I do not know what they would say now, in light of Moreno’s (disastrous) pronouncements after the (impressive) rollout of his candidacy. But at least until last week, earnest arguments for including Moreno in the opposition could still be made.

I also argued that, at least until around July this year, Moreno was still among those favored by President Duterte, enough to be considered as a possible continuity candidate. Until July, the President had always expressed admiration for the mayor, at least since he slayed the political giant Erap Estrada in 2019. It was only after Moreno criticized Sara’s attempted coronation that the President started criticizing him in turn.

But Isko Moreno is also a “career” candidate. Having known both the thrill of celebrity as an actor and the pain of loss as a senatorial candidate (in 2016), and then scaled the heights of popularity as the go-getting mayor of Manila, Moreno, in my view, understands just how fickle political goodwill can be. If he defers running, there is no assurance that he will remain popular in 2028. Now is the time.

Precisely because he is running for the career opportunity that the presidency represents, he has been trying to appeal to all; it is remarkable how, since last week, he has refrained from using the tough language the current crisis needs. (Has he even been heard from on the Pharmally scandal?). But in extending the length of the fence he is sitting on, more people can see him for who he is: a fence sitter. 
— 

Column: When power-sharing starts to fail

My column for September 21, 2021.

Today is NOT the 49th anniversary of the imposition of Marcosian martial rule; that grim milestone is still on Thursday, Sept. 23. That’s the day in 1972 that the first arrests were made. (See “Marcos’ fake anniversary,” my column of 9/22/2020.)

In creating a dictatorship, Ferdinand Marcos was also riding a global wave of authoritarianism. In Milan Svolik’s “The Politics of Authoritarian Rule,” a landmark study published in 2012 that’s reshaping the scholarship on dictatorships, we read: “Overall, dictatorships comprise between a minimum of 39 percent and a maximum of 75 percent of all countries between 1946 and 2008, corresponding to the years 2008 and 1972, respectively.” When imposing military rule allowed Marcos to create what he proudly called “constitutional authoritarianism,” he was following a global trend. Dictatorships peaked in 1972, the year he became a dictator.

By far the most common means of removal—205 dictators, or “more than two-thirds” of the 303 dictators whose exits could be determined with certainty—was by “regime insiders.”

Column: Duterte vs the Philippines

You won’t find this on Inquirer.net (the editors and managers in the Inquirer’s online affiliate have a different but unwritten set of editorial standards when it comes to my columns), but you can read it in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, on INQ Plus, in our popular Inquirer Mobile app (check out the screenshot above)—and here. There is no mistaking Duterte’s true colors. Published on September 14, 2021.

It is not the first time that President Duterte has defended or praised corrupt behavior, his own or that of his closest allies, but this time—maybe this time—many more people are taking notice and raising the alarm.

Contrary to his original declaration, made several days before he took his oath as president in 2016, that he did not want to hear about corruption, “even a whiff or whisper,” the President has not only defended the sensational, irregular Pharmally contracts; he has even signaled to the senators investigating the irregularity that he would declare war on them.On its face, the basic facts of the Pharmally irregularity are staggering: A recently incorporated company with a paid-up capital of only P625,000 is awarded pandemic-related contracts worth at least P8.7 billion. Those contracts led the national government to buy allegedly overpriced personal protective equipment, face masks, and other necessities. Given the dismal state of the national government’s pandemic response, these revelations of probable pandemic profiteering add shock to public despair.

Column: To the bottom with Salvana and Galvez

Posting tomorrow’s column. To be published in the Inquirer on September 7, 2021.

Last year, I gave the infectious diseases specialist* Edsel Salvana the benefit of the doubt. In “The growth rate in Covid-19 deaths” (3/31/2020), I criticized him for taking positions “that are not in fact based on reason but on prior disposition, intuition, or bias”—but I also recognized his “continued willingness to respond to answers, arguments, or even innuendo on Twitter.”

A year and a half later, it has become clear to me that, despite his own personal role in responding to the pandemic through the practice of his specialization (I willingly take his own word for it), his own communications advocacy is nothing but rationalization. He is not interested in the brutal truth. Instead, he is motivated by an unarticulated but obvious need to justify the Duterte government’s pandemic response, regardless of the very real, and very deadly, consequences.

Column: Forget voters’ ed; GOTV!

Published on August 31, 2021.

To stop a Duterte dynasty in national politics, the choice is clear and stark: Do not focus on voters’ education efforts. Instead, begin the presidential campaign in earnest, and get out the vote (GOTV).

I am simplifying the case, but not by much.

Consider the latest in a never-ending series of scandals: A disproportionately powerful office in the Department of Budget and Management, the procurement service (PS-DBM), has used some of the P42 billion in Department of Health funds irregularly transferred to it, to favor a small, virtually non-existent company, Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation. The favor: at least P8.6 billion in contracts from April to June 2020, to a company that had a paid-up capital of only P625,000 at its incorporation in 2019 and zero declared income also in 2019. The kicker? Pharmally had sold overpriced face masks, face shields, and personal protective equipment to the PS-DBM, said Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon. All this, in the middle of a pandemic.

A voters’ education campaign will use the revolting facts in this latest scandal to emphasize the right kind of values we need in the next president. A get out the vote campaign will use the same horrifying facts to sell the right candidate who can fix this mess and prevent such scandals from happening again.

Column: The united opposition of … 1986

Published on August 24, 2021.

Even after the assassination of opposition leader Ninoy Aquino, and especially his funeral procession, [had] shattered the last remaining pretensions of the Marcos regime to genuine popular support, the anti-Marcos opposition wasn’t united. The focus on fighting the dictator’s regime was common to all—but that fight was not understood, or fought, on the same terms.

In May 1984, for instance, less than a year after the Aquino assassination, opposition forces were split on the issue of the first regular elections for the Batasan Pambansa, the parliamentary centerpiece of Marcos’ new constitutional order. Should the opposition field candidates even though the odds were long and the voting process was likely rigged? Cory Aquino campaigned on a pragmatic note: participation without illusion, she said. Some other opposition leaders, including one of the most formidable of them all, the “old man” Lorenzo Tañada, called for a boycott of the legislative elections. Among those who joined his campaign: Ninoy and Cory’s only son, Noynoy.

Column: How to put surveys to good use

Published on August 17, 2021.

We need to be smart about surveys. I’ve heard people who work in marketing say they don’t believe in surveys because in all their life they’ve never been part of a survey’s random sample. This is basic innumeracy (how many possible sets of 1,800 respondents are there in a population of 110 million?) compounded by demographic ignorance (a marketing executive likely belongs to a sliver of the AB “class,” a random sample of which must be proportional to the actual size of that demographic class).

To be clear: Surveys are not determinative—at least until the second survey round of the 90-day campaign period. That means that it will be the survey cycle about four or five weeks into the national campaign period where we may find public opinion consolidating.

Column: Warning: Lacson

Published on August 10, 2021.

Sen. Ping Lacson ran for president in 2004, and lost badly. He received about 3.5 million votes, some 10 percent of all votes cast, placing a distant third. In the eyes of some, he cost movie actor Fernando Poe Jr. the presidency. Fast forward to 2021. Despite the prospect of a relatively easy reelection to the Senate, in what would be his fourth term, Lacson has decided to try for the presidency again. It’s the presidency or bust.

History is working against him. No one who has previously lost a presidential race ever becomes president; you get only one chance. A corollary exists: A second run for the presidency is always worse than the first. Even Joseph Estrada, who was elected president in 1998 with 10.7 million votes, about 39 percent of all votes cast, did worse in 2010. When he ran for reelection (despite the clear language of the Constitution), he received 9.4 million votes, about 26 percent of the total.

But Lacson enjoys three advantages; two of them should have been the anti-Duterte opposition’s to use. In this sense, he is a warning sign for the opposition.

Column: Warning: Trillanes

Opposition stalwart Sonny Trillanes’ baffling display of “performative political puritanism” is undermining opposition leader Leni Robredo. He should stop, and recalibrate. Published today, August 3, 2021.

After another round of sniping at Vice President Leni Robredo last week, former senator Sonny Trillanes issued a lengthy explanation yesterday. The statement is a significant walking-back of his supporters’ more aggressive comments, but it still retains a warning against the leader of the opposition. He said he and his Magdalo group want 1) only Robredo to run as the united opposition candidate for president, 2) either Isko Moreno or Grace Poe to serve as Robredo’s running mate, and 3) Robredo not to ally with “Duterte collaborators” Ping Lacson or Dick Gordon. That he included this last demand as one of the “non-negotiables” or “red lines” is only the most manifest threat.

But Trillanes, whom I respect and who has told me on several occasions that he was working to make a Robredo presidential run happen, is being less than fully forthcoming in his statement. There is a larger context, visible on social media but also audible through the communication lines that connect the political class, that frankly worries me, and I suppose others like me who actually believe in the first premise of Trillanes’ statement: That the “mission” is to ensure the rejection of the Dutertes at the polls. The way Trillanes is acting is undermining both Robredo and that mission.

Column: Yellow, red, blue, white, black

Ahead of President Duterte's last #SONA2021, journalist John Nery (@jnery_newsstand) says the #ABSCBNFranchise denial should be an election issue.

Nery says the closure of the broadcaster is the "single worst scandal of the Duterte administration." #ANCRundown pic.twitter.com/IbXn3paH9u

— ABS-CBN News Channel (@ANCALERTS) July 26, 2021

I wrote on the real dangers to press freedom we face, and (irony of ironies) Inquirer.net decided not to run my column. But it’s in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, on INQ Plus, and on Inquirer Mobile. Published on July 27, 2021.

ANC’s “The Rundown” with lawyer Mike Navallo and Nikki de Guzman gave me an opportunity on the morning of President Duterte’s last State of the Nation Address to speak on press freedom in the Philippines. I tried to offer what we may call a different kind of color commentary.

But first, it is important to emphasize that it isn’t only journalists in the Philippines or their colleagues abroad who believe that press freedom is in danger under President Duterte. In the November 2020 Social Weather Stations survey, some two-thirds of voting-age Filipinos agreed with the statement that “it was dangerous to print or broadcast anything critical of the administration, even if it is the truth.” That’s a clear indication that the public knows that journalism that is critical of the administration meets a hostile reception from the administration. (To my mind, that finding also indirectly reflects the climate of fear that the surveys have arguably labored under since 2016, when the extrajudicial killings began en masse.)

The finding—65 percent in agreement with the statement that read, in Filipino, “Mapanganib na mag-lathala/mag-print or mag-broadcast ng anumang kritikal sa administrasyon, kahit na ito ay ang katotohanan”—was up from 51 percent only in the July 2020 survey, and must certainly have been caused by the shutdown and the rejection of the new franchise of the ABS-CBN network.

How does the danger manifest?

Column: “Mabuting tao“

A winning example from the past might have a lesson for the political opposition. This week’s column, published on July 20, 2021.

If memory serves me right, Vicente “Ting” Paterno ran for the Senate in 1987 on a simple campaign theme. While his track record was clear and clean, it was also complicated; he had served as a minister in Ferdinand Marcos’ presidential-parliamentary Cabinet, before becoming an independent assemblyman, then Metro Manila chair of the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections, then one of “Cory’s Candidates” for the Senate.

His campaign poster cut, or melted, that Gordian knot of complication with a warm but also accurate slogan: “Ting Paterno. Mabuting tao.”

As I have argued before, Cory Aquino had the longest coattails in Philippine history; in that first election for the Senate since the fall of the Marcos regime, 22 of her 24 candidates won. Paterno was one of the non-politicians who rode those same coattails; like them, he also had an impressive personal reputation, backed by a sterling curriculum vitae, that recommended him to the voter. In 1987, the only time he ran for national office, 9.6 million voters cast their ballot for him.

I am reminded of this virtually forgotten moment in history because it might have something to say to us today. Ten months before the first vote is cast, I’ll step out on a limb (again), and suggest that the 2022 elections will be about change.

Column: ABS-CBN is a campaign issue

Late post, in part because the second dose of the vaccine knocked me out for a good part of the working week last week. Published in all Inquirer platforms on July 13, 2021.

The rejection a year ago of the franchise renewal application of the ABS-CBN network by the House of Representatives committee on legislative franchises was a political decision; it should have political consequences.

It was political in the barest, most basic sense: It was a display of power, made against the evidence provided by the very government agencies invited by the committee, against clear public opinion in favor of the network. At the end of the lengthy process, involving 12 hearings altogether, one of the three leaders of the anti-ABS-CBN inquisition, Rep. Rodante Marcoleta, summed up the entire proceeding with an unforgettable phrase. Notwithstanding the favorable testimony of the representatives of the various government agencies called to Congress, and the testimony of the network’s own representatives, Marcoleta said, “it is the will of Congress that must be accorded respect.”

Column: The state of the opposition

Published on July 6, 2021.

Some 10 days after the unexpected death of ex-president Noynoy Aquino, and about 10 months before the 2022 national elections, it might be good to ask: What is the state of the opposition?

Colleague Manolo Quezon has responded to my previous analyses of the prospects of the political opposition with a sweeping conclusion: Everyone becomes opposition anyway, the closer the next elections get. If true, this makes “opposition” as an analytical concept porous, ambiguous to the point of irrelevance.

But history shows us that this in fact isn’t true. In 2016, both the Roxas and Poe campaigns promised continuity with the reformist agenda of the second Aquino administration, and even candidate Rodrigo Duterte, who did campaign on a platform of change, used the three Comelec-sponsored presidential debates to also promote a corollary message: that he would have no problems implementing other campaign platforms, including that of administration candidate Roxas, as long as they work. The 1992 and 1998 elections featured more than one viable candidate campaigning for continuity: Ramos, Mitra, even arguably Salonga in 1992; and De Venecia, Lim, Roco in 1998. It’s possible that the two elections which served as a referendum on President Gloria Arroyo may be the rare events with only one continuity candidate each: Arroyo herself in 2004, Teodoro in 2010. (The last reading, however, depends on whether Manny Villar would be classified as a candidate for continuity—remember “Villarroyo”?—or change.)

So even on the simplified basis of continuity or change, “opposition” remains a very real thing. Are there prospective candidates in 2022 who represent change, and thus should be classified as opposition? Of course.

Column: P-Noy and the media

What do people mean when they say, in the wake of former President Noynoy Aquino’s untimely death, that he never got his due? On reflection, I can think of two possible meanings. Column published on all Inquirer platforms on June 29, 2021.

It is not true that the second President Aquino never got his due. Before President Duterte reached new records in satisfaction or approval ratings, Noynoy Aquino was the most popular president since regular surveys began. In fact, and I would think very few of us would remember this, his high ratings remained high in the immediate aftermath of the “Yolanda” catastrophe.

In “Analysts before surveys: Aquino post-‘Yolanda’ edition” (1/7/2014), I gently criticized the Reuters news agency for basic innumeracy. A Reuters analysis that ran on Nov. 15, 2013, a week after Yolanda, pushed a narrative of “backlash” against the President for the initial handling of the disaster by basing it on a fundamental error. Reuters alleged that Aquino’s satisfaction ratings had plunged from 74 percent to 49 percent in September (crucially, several weeks BEFORE the supertyphoon made landfall). In fact, the first figure (from March 2013) was raw satisfaction (or number of satisfied), while the second figure was net satisfaction (that is, number of satisfied minus number of dissatisfied). The raw satisfaction rating for September 2013 was actually 68 percent—still down from 74, but not by as much. In other words, Reuters compared the raw apple with the net orange.

Column: Leni and the power to convene

Published on June 22, 2021.

With the political class now focused on next year’s elections, it is even more important for us as voters and as citizens to distinguish signal from noise.

Column: Weaponizing the law… against history

The past is not only a different country; it is a litigious one too. Published on June 15, 2021.

The issue of the true location of the first Mass celebrated in the Philippines is an old one. Is it Butuan, as a Spanish tradition held, or is it Limasawa, as historical research asserts? As part of the preparations to mark the 500th anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan’s arrival in the Philippines and Lapu-Lapu’s victory in the Battle of Mactan, the National Quincentennial Committee (NQC) convened a panel of experts to investigate the controversy, yet again.

This wasn’t the first time that the Philippine government conducted an official expert inquiry into the issue.

The first one took place in 1980; the second one, called the Gancayco Committee after its chair, former Supreme Court justice Emilio Gancayco, convened in 1995; the third attempt, a committee headed by historian Benito Legarda Jr., met in 2008. All three found that the evidence supported Limasawa.

Just the same, in late 2018, the NQC formed the Mojares panel, named after its chair, National Artist for Literature Resil Mojares.

Column: Andaya, cheap talk, and costly signaling

Column No. 650, published on June 8, 2021.

Rolando Andaya Jr., a Camarines Sur representative for a total of 18 years and a budget secretary for four, is back in the news. Two weeks ago, it was for surviving an apparent assassination attempt. (The circumstances as initially reported drew a puzzling picture; the gunmen fired two shots, but Andaya said he didn’t realize what was happening and even went down from the vehicle to check on the disturbance.) And last week, it was for orchestrating ex-defense secretary and former presidential candidate Gilbert Teodoro’s return to the spotlight.

The stage was Davao City, specifically the office of Mayor Inday Sara Duterte, and the occasion was not the birthday of the President’s daughter and survey frontrunner (although it took place the week of her birthday) but rather the start of the theater season—election theater, that is. Andaya was both impresario and performer: He emceed Teodoro’s visit on social and traditional media, and played his role as enthusiastic supporter of what he called a “done deal”—the pairing of Sara and Teodoro as running mates in the 2022 elections—to the hilt.

It was, of course, no such thing. There was no done deal.

Column: What will Manny Pacquiao do now?

In the month since this column came out, Pacquiao has ramped up training for his August fight—and received overtures from the Nationalist People’s Coalition. Published on June 1, 2021.

With all the maneuvering for next year’s elections, the cracks in the Duterte governing coalition are widening.

Consider the situation of Sen. Manny Pacquiao. The boxing all-time great is a middling politician of mediocre achievement, but he is “masa,” moneyed, and motivated. The 2022 elections will be the first presidential poll where he will be old enough to run for president himself. If he wins his fight against world welterweight champion Errol Spence in August, add both massive media mileage and momentum to his set of advantages as a candidate in May. But instead of a warm welcome or a protective embrace from the presidential palace, this close ally of President Duterte’s is taking hits on all sides—and the hits are coming from the President himself or other close allies.

Column: The opposition’s narrow, viable path

Today’s column answers a question my column raised last week, and which some readers responded to by email. My reading of the situation, in sum: Go early, go big, go local, go—and others will follow. Published on May 25, 2021.

I argued last week that Vice President Leni Robredo “has a narrow but viable path to the presidential palace—if she wants it.” I believe that way forward also applies to the possible presidential candidacy of Senate Minority Leader Frank Drilon. Allow me to trace the outline of that path.

As the Danish saying goes, it is, of course, difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. But in August and September 2015 I tried to discern the “path to victory” of four potential presidential candidates: Mar Roxas, Jojo Binay, Grace Poe, and Rody Duterte. The columns were attempts not so much at reading omens as analyzing factors that could spell victory in the May 2016 vote.

The following factors help define that narrow but viable path in 2022:

Column: VP Leni’s crucial pandemic response

Last week’s column continued the occasional series of readings I’ve made of the opposition’s election prospects. Tomorrow’s is yet another in the series. Published on May 18, 2021.

Let me put some order into these thoughts, by numbering them.

1. Vice President Leni Robredo should be the next president of the Philippines.

2. I say this even though, judging from the only credible nationwide survey at the moment, her numbers remain disappointing. The question to which No. 1 is the answer is very particular: Who should succeed President Duterte?

3. The question is not: Who can succeed him? If it were, other names would rank ahead of hers, at this time.

4. But this is not to say that Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, Manila City Mayor Isko Moreno, or Sen. Manny Pacquiao have a lock on the presidency. Robredo has a narrow but viable path to the presidential palace—if she wants it.

Column: Can the opposition win the Senate?

I spoke to a group of diplomats today about the 2022 elections. We spent much of the time talking about the presidential race, but I did refer to this column, and its reading of the factors in play, more than once. Published on May 11, 2021.

If the elections were held today, the answer would be a clear No. The latest available election preference numbers, the Pulse Asia survey conducted between Feb. 22 and March 3, 2021, show that only two, or perhaps three, among the 15 candidates with a statistical chance of winning could be classified as opposition—if the elections were held last February or March.

That would be former vice president Jojo Binay and Sen. Kiko Pangilinan, who rank 14th and 15th. The “perhaps” applies to Sen. Ping Lacson, ranked 9th; he is nominally with the Duterte political coalition, but has been increasingly critical of administration policies.

But the elections are a year away. Could opposition candidates win a majority of the 12 Senate seats at stake? The answer is a definite Maybe, It Depends.

Column: Who is Xi, whom Duterte loves?

This is a late post; it was a long week. I wanted to connect an important lecture I listened to last December with Duterte’s latest display of treasonous conduct. When he described real-world affairs as “usapang bugoy” (quick translation: not “tough talk” so much as “talk among toughies”), who was the biggest bugoy in Duterte’s line of sight? Published on May 3, 2021.

Minxin Pei is a prominent China expert; he is also a leading scholar on democratization in developing countries. Last December, he gave the prestigious Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World. Building on his earlier research, including “China: From Tiananmen to Neo-Stalinism,” which ran in the January 2020 issue of the Journal of Democracy, Professor Pei focused his lecture on what he called “Totalitarianism’s Long Shadow Over China.” This lecture has now been published in the April 2021 issue of the same influential journal.

Long story short: His analysis of Xi Jinping as undisputed leader of China is deeply concerning. The first since Mao Zedong to amass the three most powerful positions in China—general secretary of the Communist Party, chair of the Central Military Commission and thus commander in chief of the military, and president with no term limits—Xi is a direct threat not only to democratic polities around the world but to the democratic prospects of China itself.

Column: Is DOH manipulating the data?

RIGHT? A screen cap of the column, as published on Inquirer Mobile.

Published on all Inquirer platforms on April 27, 2021.

In the last few days, some statisticians and data scientists I follow on Twitter have been raising a warning flag about Department of Health (DOH) statistics. Yesterday, the total number of COVID-19 cases recorded since the start of the pandemic some 14 months ago topped 1 million. That’s a grim milestone, and worrying enough. But the real source of discomfort has to do with the remarkable drop in the number of active cases.

From 203,710 active cases on April 17, the total fell to 77,075 on April 25. (It dropped further yesterday, to 74,623, with 11,333 recoveries and 8,929 new cases recorded.) This should call for, if not a celebration, then at least a round of congratulations. This is good news, right?

“But DOH reported more than 93,000 [new] cases in just the past 10 days, higher than today’s [number of] active cases,” Edson Guido, a PhD candidate in economics at the University of the Philippines and data analytics lead of ABS-CBN, wrote on April 25.

If I understand him correctly, that means that — even assuming that all 93,000 new cases are mild and asymptomatic — all those 93,000 new cases by the DOH’s own standards must still be considered active on the 10th day. (The standard guidance today is if you test positive but do not show any symptoms, you must isolate for 10 days.) Why was the total number of active cases pegged at 77,075? Puzzling, to say the least.

Column: The government is a vacuum

Three warning signs that the national government is losing control of the situation on the ground: Stirrings of unrest provoked by the President’s failing response to the worsening pandemic or by the President himself. Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, INQ Plus, and Inquirer Mobile, but (sigh) not in Inquirer.net, on April 20, 2021.

The national government is losing control of the situation. Consider the following:

Military unrest. Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Cirilito Sobejana denied rumors that “a group of retired and active military officers” was withdrawing their support from President Duterte. Lorenzana’s denial was categorical and comprehensive.

There is no reason to doubt Lorenzana, but the fact that “military unrest” has yet again become a category of possibility is largely the fault of President Duterte. When he emerged on April 12 after another prolonged absence, he took the extraordinary (but also characteristic) step of highlighting a deeply unflattering criticism against him, that he is inutile, and turning it, in his telling, into a weapon against his critics.

Any adequate translation of the President’s Filipino would capture another of his characteristic turns of speech, changing his first-person usage to the third person: “Will I last this long? Will I last this long in this goddamned position if I were inutile? Would the military allow me to govern when that is how you govern? [If] you did nothing?”

This was not the first time the President made the anti-democratic argument that his mandate as president was at the pleasure of the military. Even earlier in his term, when he was at the unquestioned height of his popularity, he would tease the top brass, telling them to form a junta, or to tell him to step aside if their patience had run out. It must be that the President actually believes this, that the military can force him out. The argument is sincere, but nevertheless it is profoundly anti-democratic.

Now that public discontent in the middle of the pandemic can no longer be disguised or denied, the President has again resorted to what is in fact the residual professionalism of the military leadership as proof of his competence. Irrational, but it leads logically to the inevitable consequence: Rumors of military unrest. Expect the rumors to continue.