It is said that universities can be seen as a smaller scale version of society. And just like in the national elections, the Ateneo has had its fair share of electoral blunders.
Elections in the Philippines seem to follow a pattern: There will always be more candidates who are dependent on their family names rather than those who run for office with an actual platform. What is even more unlikely is for a candidate to be fielded by a political party with an actual political ideology.
Though the problem of political dynasties cannot be applied to the Ateneo, the problem of politicization and platform-based politics, or even partisan politics, is still prevalent.
Thus, a month after the national midterm elections and a month before the Sanggunian special elections, it is appropriate to survey the voting landscape.
Election expectations
A perennial problem governments are faced with is getting its constituents to vote. According to an article published in The Philippine Star, out of 94 million Filipinos, only about 52 million were registered to vote in the 2013 national and local elections.
In an effort to make the voting process easier for Filipinos, President Benigno Aquino III recently signed Proclamation No. 571, s. 2013, which declared May 13 a special public non-working holiday.
The rise of voting rates in recent years (around 80 to 85% in national elections) seems to hint at something more hopeful. However, this is marred by various counts of voter fraud.
In another article in The Philippine Star, Corazon Bernardo, Chairperson of the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), said that 18 Namfrel chapters “reported the inclusion of at least 342 names of deceased persons.” These names were found in the Certified Voters Lists in Ilocos Sur, Mandaluyong, Guimaras, Malabon, Camarines Sur, Mountain Province and Aklan.
The rise of voter turnout in national elections is unfortunately not reflected in the Ateneo. The 2013 Sanggunian election was one of the worst in recent history with regard to voter turnout. The Ateneo Commission on Elections declared a failure of elections for the School of Humanities, the School of Science and Engineering and the School of Social Sciences (SOSS).
“One crucial similarity between national and Atenean elections is that majority of the Ateneans seem to have not voted at all for either student council elections or even this year’s 2013 [national] elections,” says Toni Potenciano (AB Comm ‘13), who was last year’s SOSS chairperson. Indeed, only 3,243 out of 8,000 Ateneans voted in the 2013 Sangguian elections—less than 50% of the student population.
“Quickly, people would point to it as a failure of the Sanggunian to be relevant to the student body,” Potenciano adds. She cites the Sanggunian’s “institutional crisis”—the constant questioning of the student government’s relevance to its constituents—as one factor that may have caused the failure. She also says that another factor could be the “so-called apathetic student body,” or perhaps all of these factors combined.
When asked about how the Atenean elections can be modified, John Gokongwei School of Management Chairperson JV Poe says the Ateneo should cancel midday classes to allow students to vote. “Elections of the student government aren’t given as much importance by the administration as they should,” says Poe.
The current practice is to allow several days for students to vote in precincts set up in corridors, but a more fixed voting period might just be what the student body needs.
Commitments
To win an election, one needs financial backing. Money is essential for a candidate’s numerous posters, ads, and endorsements. Wealth pushes the boundaries of campaigning through screen time. Jingles play ten times a day on local channels, and ads showing a candidate’s struggle through poverty reign supreme.
Name recall is also affected by the actions and influence of the candidates’ related political parties. It is unthinkable for politicians to switch parties mid-campaign; a political party is a brand, a fixed political program that a candidate clings to for support, financially and otherwise.
Days after the official campaign period began, senators-elect Grace Poe, Chiz Escudero and Loren Legarda were dropped from the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) slate. According to a statement by Campaign Manager and Navotas Representative Toby Tiangco of the UNA, the decision was made because the then-senatorial candidates had not “taken any concrete moves or extended meaningful gesture to assure that they will live up to their commitments.”
While she was included in President Aquino’s Team PNoy slate, Poe led the 2013 senatorial race as an independent candidate. This meant that she ran as she would have in a candidate-centered system, where the brand and ideology were entirely hers and hers alone. A party-centered system, on the other hand, allows candidates to support the brand and ideology their party stands for—a concept that is still sadly lacking in the Filipino political psyche.
Party-centered politics, or partisan politics, gives importance to the background of a candidate and what a certain party’s beliefs are. Candidate-centered systems can also be referred to as personality politics. This sort of system relies heavily on the appeal of the candidate rather than what the candidate truly stands for, if he or she stands for anything at all.
Candidates are known to move from one political party to the next in between election periods, so much so that political parties have simply lost their meaning. Instead, Filipino political parties serve as campaign funders for candidates.
Branding and name recall
Aside from financial advantages and political affiliations, however, candidates must also have personality. While this thought may immediately lend itself to national politics, it is worthy to note that this occurrence can be seen in campus elections, as well.
“School elections are a microcosm of the national elections,” says Sanggunian Finance Officer Tin Andujare. “But we cannot just rule out the fact that school politics are more personal.”
“Unfortunately, the platform of a candidate is not enough,” Andujare adds. She explains that a candidate’s campaign is not adequate to show how the candidate will work once elected. Filipinos know this to be true; almost all the 2013 senatorial candidates promised the same things: jobs, cheaper food, a better life.
Political parties can represent and define their candidates. More often than not, though, candidates are defined by their personal branding.
Last May, there were plenty of personalities with significant name recall with little to say about the policies they stood for. The 16th Congress is full to the brim with personalities, from members political dynasties to showbiz veterans.
Grace Poe was the chairperson of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) for a time, but she is best known as the daughter of the late actor and former presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. and famed actress Susan Roces. Poe—whose married name is actually Llamanzares—had no prior political experience, but she was backed by those who had believed in FPJ and in the Poe name.
Multi-party mishap
When discussing Atenean campus politics, something usually deplored is the political party system, or lack thereof. The same parallel can be drawn when it comes to national politics. “Many of us vote based on our connections, and not so much based on what these people really stand for,” JV Poe says.
Potenciano agrees; she says that parties—whether they be for national or campus elections—are “merely vehicles for people to run.” These political formations, she says, don’t even run under a platform, focusing instead on “a set of colors as well as name recall.”
Political parties do not just serve as an ideological platform for candidates. According to the article “Political parties: Necessary for democracy?” by Matthias Catón of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, political parties should develop policies and programs—that is, they should function before and after election season.
Catón also says that political parties should take into account the demands of society and be able to “shape human needs into policy alternatives,” which in turn makes these parties an integral part of the political process.
Another function that political parties must fulfill is to involve not only its candidates, but the citizens as well. In the book Easy Guide to a Modern Political Party, Thomas Meyer says, “at the grassroots level, well-functioning party democracies are established in a broad and active civil society.”
Perhaps the most important thing that a political party should do outside the elections is to oversee and try to gain control of the government through fielding candidates. This is why strong opposition parties are essential to a functional democracy: They also serve as an extra layer of check and balance.
The problem of non-functional political parties in the Philippines has formed a vicious cycle. Politicians are blamed for not being able to go past their own interests, and the voters for not voting based on party affiliation or not partaking in partisan politics. Not having a system for political parties is problematic because political parties are the “main organizational forms of modern democracy,” Meyer says.
Thus the lack of political parties—and even politicization within Ateneo campus politics—is alarming. JV Poe says that current political parties in the Ateneo “leave much to be desired.”
Potenciano says that one problem of political parties in the Ateneo is that they “no longer politicize the student body,” but also says that the students are not free from blame. “If [political parties] are politicizing, it means nothing to the students,” she adds.
The popular vote
The aggregate problems of Philippine politics—which were seen both in this year’s national elections in May and Sanggunian general elections in February—shouldn’t hinder the youth from hoping. However, it may be equally unavoidable to look dismally upon the state of Filipino politics.
“Ateneans no longer feel the relevance of their student government. If they did, they would be voting,” says JV Poe. While the same cannot be said about the way voters perceive the national government, there is some truth to the problem of relevance.
According to Potenciano, the Sanggunian has much “potential to be integral to the socio-political formation of a student in Ateneo.” Though there is still much to be desired of the political scene on campus, it is true that an Atenean’s voting mentality is certainly formed in the university. “Voting is a genuine political exercise where we are able to pick the people who make big decisions on behalf of us as well as voting to change the play of power within the legislation,” she adds.
It has been said that the results of the 2013 midterm elections will pave the way for the 2016 presidential elections. As most of President Aquino’s preferred senatorial candidates won seats in the Senate, some Filipinos seem to be more hopeful. This hopeful mood is strengthened by the fact that these elections were less violent than previous elections. However, there are still some things amiss.
While the debate rages on about who to blame for the state of Philippine politics, one thing remains true: there is power in the vote. The solution, if any, may not be as simple as exercising the right to, but it does begin there.
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