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: 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: Cayetano occupies Mocha’s ‘blog’

The factional lines in the Duterte coalition are hardening. Column No. 624, published today, December 1, 2020, in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, on INQ Plus, and (link here) on Inquirer Mobile—but (for the 13th time this year) not in Inquirer.net.

Starting on May 12, 2020, the Mocha Uson Blog began vociferously criticizing Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano, then the speaker of the House of Representatives. Under the direction and the byline of Banat By (the main administrator of the “blog”), Duterte supporters were asked to hit Cayetano. (Literally: The invitation was “banatan si Cayetano.”) His crime: Proposing a provisional franchise for the ABS-CBN network that would last all of a few months, until October 2020.

The largest pro-Duterte space on social media continued to criticize Cayetano until he gave up on the idea.

“Because of all this divisiveness and after consulting with the members of the House, the political parties, and the regional groups,” Cayetano told a plenary session of the House on May 19, “I, together with the House of Representatives leadership, have decided to forego with the provisional franchise, and immediately proceed with the hearings for the full 25-year renewal application of the ABS-CBN franchise.”

Column: Power struggle in Congress

Published today, October 13, 2020.

We can be morally indignant at the power struggle in the House of Representatives, happening out in the open in the middle of a pandemic that the government has barely contained. We can be coldly analytical about the alignment of political blocs in Congress and the matrix of possible alliances and probable consequences. But those of us critical of the Duterte program of government should not let indignation color our analysis.

Yes, the Cayetano and Velasco factions both belong to the administration supermajority. But even though we may feel like shouting, “A pox on both your houses,” we should not read the situation as “It’s all the same, no matter who wins.”

“The pattern is clear: The free press is under attack”

In the first seven months of the year, the Consortium on Democracy and Disinformation—a national network of journalists, academics, and civil society representatives, supported by four universities—issued three joint statements to defend ABS-CBN from the predatory tactics of the Duterte administration. (The Consortium, to which I belong, has also issued statements in defense of Maria Ressa and Rappler, and of Ellen Tordesillas and several other journalists.)

I thought putting all the ABS-CBN statements together in one place can give all of us a clearer picture of the pattern of predation. Once Duterte’s political allies realized early this year that the President was dead serious about his often-repeated threats to shut down ABS-CBN, they went on the attack.

Column: ‘It is what it is’

Column No. 604. Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and on INQ Plus, but not on Inquirer.net, today, July 14, 2020.

The technical working group (TWG) convened by the committee on legislative franchises concluded its 40-page report on the ABS-CBN network’s application for a new franchise with a section on freedom of the press.

“In resolving the franchise application of ABS-CBN, this Committee assures the House of Representatives that this matter is in no way related to the freedom of the press. It is what it is—a denial of a privilege granted by the State because the applicant was seen as undeserving of the grant of a legislative franchise.”

And then again, like a lady protesting too much: “By no means can this franchise application be related to press freedom. If it were so, then all applicants for legislative franchises covering mass media could simply claim such freedom and force the hand of this Committee each time. Such a scenario is totally inconsistent with the nature of legislative franchises as a mere privilege and never a matter of right.”

This language is more colorless than that used by Rep. Rodante Marcoleta, one of the chief critics of the network’s application, but stay still long enough and you can still smell in it the sulphur of Marcoleta’s earlier, reckless words. The day before the committee voted against the renewal on the TWG’s non-unanimous recommendation, Marcoleta said the statements from the different officials representing various government agencies whom the committee itself invited to testify in the hearings did not carry much weight.

“It is the will of Congress that should be accorded due respect simply because it is Congress that has the sole and ultimate authority to grant or deny application of franchises,” Marcoleta said.

To quote the TWG: “It is what it is.”

“Condemn Cayetano Congress for damaging democracy, spreading disinformation”

JOINT STATEMENT
OF THE CONSORTIUM ON DEMOCRACY AND DISINFORMATION*
A national network of journalists, academics, and civil society representatives

The Consortium on Democracy and Disinformation denounces the decision of the Committee on Legislative Franchises to reject a new franchise for the ABS-CBN network. Despite the manifest unfairness of the hearings conducted, and the miraculously efficient 40-page report the Technical Working Group released 24 hours or so after the last hearing, the Cayetano Congress could not and cannot stop the truth from coming out: Other government agencies proved that the main issues thrown at ABS-CBN were baseless.

For the Cayetano Congress to minimize these agencies’ findings and insist that these issues remain valid is to spread disinformation.

The Department of Justice confirmed that network chair emeritus Gabby Lopez is a natural-born Filipino. The Securities and Exchange Commission testified that both ABS-CBN and GMA networks use Philippine Depositary Receipts and that they are not “evidence of ownership.” The National Telecommunications Commission acknowledged that ABS-CBN did not violate its franchise with its multiple TVPlus programs. The Bureau of Internal Revenue proved that the network had no tax delinquencies. The Department of Labor and Employment said in its opinion ABS-CBN was compliant with labor standards (although, to be certain, other labor issues remain). To insist, as Rep. Rodante Marcoleta has done and the TWG report smoothly rationalizes, that these statements from government agencies do not matter and only “the will of Congress” does is to abuse a power granted by the Constitution, in order to spread disinformation.

The worst disinformation is to assert that denying the country’s largest news network a new franchise is not a press freedom issue. The TWG report itself devotes four pages to matters of editorial content: alleged “biased reporting, inappropriate program content and political meddling.” To insist, as the report does in its conclusion, that this is “in no way related to the freedom of the press” is to spread disinformation.

Insisting on the so-called will of Congress at the expense of the truth is an abuse of power that damages essential traditions and institutions: predictability of rules, accountability of government officials, evidence-based policy-making. The Cayetano Congress used this will to prevent a news organization, however imperfect, from speaking truth to power. That’s the truth.

Column: Of course Cayetano is to blame

Posting this here seven months late, but it is the day the House of Representatives rejected the ABS-CBN application for a new franchise, and it can offer the angry and outraged a small burst of catharsis. To be clear, Alan Cayetano was only heeding President Duterte’s deepest desire, to shut down ABS-CBN. But he, whose family would not have had a political franchise of their own if not for ABS-CBN, was the chief enabler in today’s assault on press freedom. The knives that administration personalities were sharpening for Speaker Cayetano (one of them told me over lunch last December that they couldn’t wait to take Cayetano on) have been stayed twice, however: first by the eruption of Taal Volcano, and then by the greater crisis of the coronavirus pandemic. Will there still be a reckoning for the chaos of the 2019 Southeast Asian Games? Published on December 3, 2019.

The vigorous social media campaign that began last week to defend the preparations for the 2019 Southeast Asian Games—and not coincidentally organize support for Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano, the beleaguered chair of the Philippine SEA Games Organizing Committee or Phisgoc—has a reality problem and a perception problem. The reality is: The lack of preparation and the display of incompetence have been thoroughly documented, not only by Philippine but also by other Southeast Asian news organizations. And the campaign’s perception-shaping objective suffered a serious complication when President Duterte, the same president many of these social media operators supported and campaigned for and spread disinformation on behalf of in and since 2016, apologized for the organizers’ embarrassing shortcomings.

“You cannot just cast away all those, the discomfort, the sufferings of the athletes… sleeping on the floors, waiting for so many hours, getting hungry… This might really be a small matter but you just cannot flick your fingers, ‘Ah, maliit ’yan (Ah, that’s trivial),’” the President told CNN Philippines the day before the opening ceremonies.

Column: Power struggle in the Palace—and Bikoy

Published on August 6, 2019.

A revealing sequence of events, which we can file under “Administrative Dysfunction as a Sign of an Internal Power Struggle.”

Yesterday, Sen. Bong Go—in his continuing role as President Duterte’s chief interpreter — announced that former Estrada Cabinet official William Dar was returning to the Department of Agriculture (DA) to replace Secretary Manny Piñol. Soon after, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez was quoted as welcoming the appointment, saying Dar had the educational qualifications and the domestic and international experience an agriculture chief needs. At around the same time, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea told reporters that Dar was under consideration, as one among several recommendations, but that no decision had yet been made. An unnamed source (from the circumstances, it sounded like Medialdea himself) also said that “a member of [President] Duterte’s economic team” had been recommending Dar for the DA post “since 2017.”

About two hours later, Medialdea confirmed Go’s announcement, but only up to a point. He said Dar would be named ACTING agriculture secretary to replace Piñol, who was the face (and also literally the hand, the shove-lowly-fisherman-out-of-the-way hand) who symbolized the administration’s disastrous response to the plight of the Gem-Ver fishermen. Dominguez’s quote describing Dar’s credentials then made the rounds again.

Did the administration’s right hand simply not know what the left hand was doing?

Column: Notes on a coronation

Published on July 23, 2019.

A tweet from ABS-CBN reporter RG Cruz summed it up nicely: “Speakership election is proceeding smoothly, defying all speculations,” he wrote. The confrontation some had expected between the Duterte-supporting factions in the House of Representatives had turned into a coronation. But will the crown rest easy on the head of new Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano?

It never helps when the limits of one’s power are clear for all to see. It was President Duterte who anointed Cayetano, in public, by announcing a term-sharing agreement between the three remaining candidates for the Speaker’s post. While presidential intervention in the election of the Speaker is a fact of Philippine politics, such a naked and unprecedented display of the President’s preference—necessary to break the deadlock—only diminishes his candidate.

Column: After Duterte: A preview

Published on July 16, 2019.

The images were distasteful. They showed Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano bowing low before President Duterte, who had just anointed him Speaker of the House of Representatives. He is doing the “mano,” the Filipino ritual of respect, but something is wrong. He is bowing too low, and the President does not seem to like it. In the way the President angles his body, which suggests that he is taking away his hand, and in the way his face is set, the President seems to be expressing his own distaste.

Column: A reality check for the political opposition

Published on September 25, 2018.

Pulse Asia’s recent survey on senatorial preferences, conducted Sept. 1-7, some eight months before the midterm elections, shows that the Senate race is still very much the Duterte administration’s to lose.

Despite the continuing drop in President Duterte’s ratings over three quarters, the electoral situation is reminiscent, not of 2007, when opposition names dominated the list of senatorial preferences, but of 2013, when administration-friendly faces topped the list. And despite the unmistakable public anger over rising prices and worsening conditions, the Senate election math is still stacked against the opposition.

Column: Teo, Acosta, and the degeneration of the elites

Published on May 8, 2018.

Last week, I called President Duterte “a lion who thinks he is a fox,” and described Kim Jong-un as “someone perceived as a lion who turned out to be a fox.” I was borrowing the theory of circulating elites proposed by the Italian thinker Vilfredo Pareto, who in turn borrowed his terminology from Machiavelli.

Reading Pareto (very slowly), I grow increasingly convinced that his theory explains the rise and eventual fall of Dutertismo. President Duterte is an example of the leader of a lion-elite which rules by force; former president Gloria Arroyo led, for almost a decade, a fox-elite which governed by cunning. As the scholars John Higley and Jan Pakulski phrase it: “Governing elites embody wide and complex patronage networks and practices, as well as a psychosocial propensity and consequent style of governance tending to rely on cunning and persuasion or determination and force.”

Dutertismo may be best explained as the ascendancy of a Class II elite, where authority is the preferred “instrument of persuasion.” There is a short, straight line between appeal to authority and the resort to force and determination. Pareto names this Class II elite after the lion. Higley and Pakulski write: “Leonine elites act with idealism, intolerance and a strong preference for applying force to achieve and cement social unity.”

“ITIGIL ANG SPEKULASYON NG MGA JOURNALISTS TULAD NI JOHN NERI” (sic)

A really late post. I thought I had already posted this speech I read at the annual national conference of the Philippine Association of Communication Educators, held on April 17, 2015 at De La Salle University Dasmariñas; I ran excerpts in my column on April 28, 2015, and then I guess I just forgot. On hindsight, the speech was, among other things, an attempt to understand pre-Duterte (levels of) trolling.

The Quality of Discourse in the New Media Landscape

I want to begin by quoting a comment posted online in response to my column last Tuesday [April 14, 2015]. It is a virtually anonymous comment, and I have mixed feelings about encouraging the practice of cheap, convenient anonymity by referencing it, but this coarseness is now an everyday part of the texture of new media, and you and I have to live with it. So we live and let live, and quote it.

After I argued that it was the PNP’s Special Action Force that should in fact “man up” about its shortcomings in the Mamasapano incident, a commenter using the name caricid wrote:

“Malacañang is very worried and has sent its paid hacks like John Nery to attack the SAF because Malacañang is afraid that SAF will expose the truth regarding PNoy’s issuing the stand down orders that condemned the 44 troopers to their deaths. PNoy and the AFP have involved themselves in this conspiracy to cover up the issuance of the stand down orders. Only the truth will set the spirits of those brave troopers free. Until then, there is no moving on. The likes of Nery and PNoy cannot just make this dastardly crime go away. Justice must be done. Besides, PNoy cannot escape the fact that he gave the green light to this debacle called Mamasapano.”

This is not exactly the kind of insightful response a columnist can’t wait to read over the breakfast table, but I do not know if communication educators like you know just how rampant, how prevalent, this category of response is, in the comment threads.

Column: “Dutertismo: New Filipino, or anti-Filipino?”

ALL SMILES. I made a courtesy call on Rodrigo Duterte, then the mayor of Davao City, before the start of the first presidential debate of the 2016 campaign. Cagayan de Oro City, February 21, 2016. (Borrowed from GMA News Online | Thank you to Amita Legaspi)

President Duterte is trying to change what it means to be Filipino—by appealing to his countrymen’s worst impulses. Published on September 5, 2017.

Rodrigo Duterte ran on a simple promise; it is in the nature of political slogans to be conveniently vague, and “Change is coming” was short-term specific (get ready for an untraditional politician) but long-term ambiguous (change was however one defined it). He did stand for something in the public mind: He would be tough against crime and drugs, ready to fill Manila Bay with 100,000 corpses; he would be firm against China, flying the Philippine flag in the Chinese coast guard’s face while riding on a jet ski; he would take care of his people, the same way he paternalistically took care of Davao City; he would negotiate an honorable peace with communist insurgents and with Moro separatists, because he understood their struggle; not least, he would be decisive, unlike President Noynoy Aquino.

Today we can say that the President has kept his promise: Change is here. And it is soaked in blood, submerged in uncertainty, saturated in the brine of betrayal. (I have previously noted that the three main changes under “Dutertismo” were the unprecedented wave of extrajudicial killings, the underprepared pivot to China and the unjust rehabilitation of the Marcoses.)

Column: But where is the President?

When the President went missing. Published on June 27, 2017.

I understand, from the official daily schedule circulated on Monday by the Presidential Communications Operations Office, that President Duterte will make a public appearance today for the first time in almost a week. The “tentative schedule” (these releases are almost always classified as tentative) shows the President attending the “Eid’l Fitr Celebration” in Malacañang at 7 p.m.

This marks the second time in as many weeks that Mr. Duterte has been missed. He was not seen in public from June 12 to 16, and again from June 21 to 26 — assuming, that is, that he keeps his appointment tonight. (It is the only appointment on his agenda today, according to the schedule shared with the reporters and bloggers who cover him.)

At a general meeting of the Public Relations Society of the Philippines last week that I was privileged to address, a gentleman during the Q&A noted the traditional media’s “failure” to report on the President’s whereabouts. I understood what he meant, and conceded his point (in a word, the media should dig deeper), but I also noted other factors at work that made the President’s first prolonged absence controversial.

Column: The Duterte camp’s internal contradictions

Prompted by the last line of the previous column. Published on March 21, 2017.

I use the word “camp” advisedly, because the fundamental inconsistencies exist not only inside the administration but also among its political allies in and with the administration’s support apparatus. Here are 10 internal contradictions that may pose a threat to the harmony, unity, or even viability of the Duterte camp.

Dominguez vs. Lopez. I cannot recall an instance where a sitting member of the Cabinet testified against another member before the Commission on Appointments. But that’s exactly what Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez did a week ago, expressing his opposition to Gina Lopez’s appointment as environment secretary. It was an extraordinary scene, one of the President’s alter egos coming out publicly, methodically, against the confirmation of another of the President’s alter egos. The President has renewed his public declaration of support for Lopez. But people close to the President say that in fact he wants Lopez to read the handwriting on the wall and gracefully resign her appointment. Whatever the true situation, it is unusual for a policy difference like the administration stance on mining to be fought, in the CA, by dueling secretaries.

Column: How Pimentel became Senate president

 

New Senate President Aquilino Koko Pimentel III is all smiles after he was elected with a 20-3 vote on Monday at the Senate. INQUIRER/ MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

Published on July 26, 2016.

AS SOON as it became clear, on election night, that Rodrigo Roa Duterte would win the presidency by a landslide, I followed the contest for the Senate presidency with keen interest. In part this was because Sen. Koko Pimentel, the president of the winning party, is a childhood friend and a high school classmate; in greater part, I was interested because I believe that the Senate in a Duterte administration would have to walk the fine line between support for a popular President and resistance against that President’s strongman impulses.

Since May 9, I have followed the contest closely, and have spoken to six senators, several congressmen, and a few political operatives. What follows is what I have managed to piece together; it is possible that I have only in fact described different parts of the proverbial elephant, and not the elephant itself. But it still may be worth a read.

Like many, I was stunned by the speed of capitulation in the House of Representatives. Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez’s capture of the speakership was a political blitzkrieg; about a week and a half after the election, he had already sealed the deal. In contrast, the contest for leadership in the Senate promised to be the most closely fought in decades.

Column: Cayetano on Duterte and the media

 

Published on June 7, 2016.

I have had occasion to criticize Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano directly in this space, but I believe he does not take it against me. He is a rare breed of politician in that sense; he seeks to engage even his (occasional) critics, confident in his ability to make his case. When I had the chance to interview him during the campaign period, the vice presidential candidate was his usual articulate self—he mentioned the fact that I had criticized him before, but only in passing, and only as an example of the difference in our responsibilities: his as a politician, mine as a journalist.

His views on President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s criticism of media practices, and in particular of those of national media organizations based in Manila, hold a special fascination for me then. Over the weekend, I heard him express these views thrice: at the “VIP lane” leading to the massive victory rally dubbed “One Love, One Nation” in Crocodile Park in Davao City on Saturday, on stage at that rally, and in an exclusive interview with Inquirer.net (also carried live on Facebook) the following day.

I found his VIP lane version to be the most developed and on point, and I would like to engage with his views as he expressed them then, in a chance interview (the far better term for ambush interview, which came into use during the first Aquino administration) by national and local media.

Column: The other face of Mamasapano

Published on April 7, 2015.

IN THE first two months after the Mamasapano incident, the “face” of the encounter was a collective: The SAF 44. The tragic fate of the 44 Special Action Force troopers who perished in the cornfields of Mamasapano became the main narrative; suave opportunists like Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano and born-again politicians like Rafael Alunan rode the public outrage over the “massacre” of the elite policemen, to take direct aim at the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law. A TV network even used a hashtag that sought #truthforthefallen44—as though truth were like justice, and took sides.

Column: What on earth is eating Alan Cayetano?

Published on March 3, 2015.

Last week marked a new low point for the opportunistic demagoguery of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano. I was with other journalists covering the inspection tour of various sites in Central Mindanao by the police Board of Inquiry, so I was not able to see an otherwise intelligent young man transform yet again into a hypocritical bully on live television.

But I do have proof that he is a bully and a hypocrite.

Column: The bully in Miriam Santiago

This column, written in the immediate aftermath of supertyphoon Yolanda or Haiyan, generated intense feedback in the comments thread on Inquirer.net — many of the abusive kind. I guess that’s what happens when a politician is treated, or treats herself, as a celebrity, as a “darling of the media;” the fans come out with their daggers drawn. An interesting experience. Published on November 12, 2013.

I write out of a sense of duty—knowing not only that “politics” is the last thing people want to read about these days but also that other subjects (discussed fortunately in other columns or in the news pages) are, truly, matters of life or death. But Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s “star turn” at the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing last week was so wrong, on so many counts, that letting it slide under a storm surge of post-“Yolanda” media attention would be an injustice. Bear with me.