/ MAy 21, 2019
TUESDAY
WWWINQUIRER.NET
Myths, misconceptions about 2o7g vote
l! he 2019 midterm elections have come
I Uut
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not entirely gone; serious
I questions
about possible fraud re-
I main. We can all be sure of one thing.
The Commission on Elections dropped the
ball; the country's fourth automated elec-
Lion should have been a cinch.
On the national leyel, the scale of defeat
of the opposition is unprecedented in the
post-Edsa era- But the results were fore-
shadowed by the surveys. On the local level,
many surprises happened; they reveal a
much more complicated picture than just
simply that President Duterte had won an
unquestioned vote of confi dence.
Consider just the most pointed exam-
ple. Th.ree-fourths of the politicians the
President named in his controversial and
unconstitutional "drug list" (that's 27 out
.of 36) won their elections. But there were
other mlths and misconceptions.
Let's start with a mistake that's easy
to correct. l it comes to ambitions for higher office. See
The number of votes Cynthia Villar re-
ceived is proof of cheating. This early take,
whjch gained altde traction a day or so after
the elections. charged that Villar;s :5 million
votes could not be authentic because the
leading Senate candidate of the last three
etections averaged around l8 to :o million
votes. This misake is based on a lack of
knowledge about the number of registered
voters (63.6 million), the actuai voter tumout
(43.9 miljon), or t}le nonlinear impact of
population growth on Senate elections.
In 2o1o, Bong Revilla topped the Senate
race with r9.5 million votes, becoming the
flllst person since Mar Roxas in 2oo4 to cross
the 19 million theshold; in 2013, Grace poe
became the fust person in Philippine history
to gain over zo million voles; in 2016, Franklin
Drilon became ttle first Senate president to
win reelection by topping the Senate vote,
with 18.6 million votes. The population was
steadily increasing through these years; but
popularion growth alone could not guarantee
that the vote torats would also increase
steadily. Conversely, it would be a mistake to
think that the totals would not breach tb.f
' But other local results showed the se-
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20 million threshold in 2019.
Villar's fiist-place finish in the Senate
race makes her tlre front-runner in the
uozz presidential election. -Senate top-
notchers have a history olheartbieak whin
Salonga (three.time topnotcher). Loren
Legarda (twice), Poe (once). To be sure,
tlere is tJre example of Cloria Macapagal
Arroyo, who topped the Senate vote in 1995.
Bui compared to her husband, the billion-
aire entrepremur Manny Villar, Cynthia is
iacking in the charisma department.
The Marcoses are making their last
gasp. This was my mista-ke, committed to
writing. I
thought that with the savly
strategibt Rudy Farina! contesting the Ilo-
cos Norte governorship, and Imee Marcos'
slippage in the polis, the countrywas head-
ed to the first Marcos-free election since
1992. I was entirely wrong. It would be ex-
tremety difficult for the Supreme Court, as
the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, to rule
in favor of Bongbong Marcos' decrepit
election protest. But the real politician in
the family, Imee, now has a national plat-
form. There's no disguising that.
Hugpong ng Pagbabago is the party of truth is, the equity of the incumbent isn't
the future. Davao City Mayor Inday Sara whatitused to be.
Duterte was reponedly overjoyed when 12
of the 13 senatorial candidates endorsed by .On Twitter: @jnery_newsstand, email:
her regional-party-turned-poltical-alliance jnery@inquirercom.ph
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swept the ciqy's Senate polls. Only Iiggjr
Manicad failed to make the first 12 in Davao
City; eyen more noteworthy, perennial sur-
vey favodte Grace Poe placed only 13tll
vere limits of an alliance based mostly on
borrowed charisma (the President's, of
course). Inday Sara's bete noire Pantaleon
Alvarez reclaimed his seat in tlie first dis-
trict of Davao del Norte in a massive land-
slide against a key Hugpong personality,
Davao del Norte cov. Anthony del Rosario. '
Alvarez's former ally, Rep. Antonio Floiren- .
do jr., on whom he turruld when he became
speaker of the House, and whose fortune
backed Hugpong, lost his race in the
province's second district
If Hugpbng could not elect Areir own two
stalwarts, in ttle very center of the region they
had staked as thet own, what kind of influ-
ence can they be expected to bring td bear in
otler regions or in the nation as a whole?
In fact, the national results of the Senate
elections show that Higpong's clout is very
much open td debate. Four of their 13 candi
dates failed to win; one of tieir winning can-
didates, Koko Pimentel, they even dropped
ilom their sample ballot inDavao City. The
ones who did win, such as Villar or pia
Cayetano or Somy Angar4 h'ad their own
considerable political capital to begin wittL
Mr. Duterte's "enduring popularity',
spelled the difference. There is some truttt
to this, but again take a lobk at the results.
The Duterte candidates who could have used
his popularity fared badly: pafael Alunan, '
Freddie Aguilar, Dong Mangudadatu, Mani-
cad. The ones who won were already popu-
lar or moneyed to begin witb" Only two were
virtual nobodies in 2016: Bong Go and Bato
dela Rosa. Only the purposely btind will not
see tlat they were the beneficiaries of gov-
ernrnent spending well before the elections.
Perception is power in politics. But the