Crabs

When candidates could no longer pull themselves up, they drag their rivals down. That is the electoral expression of crab mentality.

The closing stage of this electoral campaign, it seems, will be loaded up with negatives. As the margin between the frontrunners and the tail-enders widens, losing candidates are frantically looking for negative attack lines that might, somehow, enable them to throw a lucky punch.

In boxing, when one fighter is way ahead in points, the only way his rival might hope to win the match is to knock out the leading contender. That is the same logic in play in the electoral game. Those lagging in the voter preference survey need desperately to knock out the survey leaders – having so little time to reverse the general trends.

In the presidential race, Rodrigo Duterte is building up his lead. It is not surprising his rival might try to cut him down to size, seizing every opportunity to create controversy out of every utterance the survey leader makes. In the case of Duterte, the candidate is generous about giving his enemies enough opportunities to attack him for reckless and outlandish things coming out of his mouth.

See how his “rape joke” blew up. There is obvious intent here to blow down his bid.

In the vice presidential race, Bongbong Marcos is starting to build up a lead similar to Duterte’s. The only way to stop him is to build a high wall of negatives.

Noynoy Aquino himself launched the negative campaign against Bongbong during the commemoration of the Edsa uprising. He basically called on the people to recall the horrors of the martial law period and make the sins of the father visit upon the son. The entire commemoration centered on reliving the horrors of dictatorship, including gruesome mockups of torture chambers.

Leftist groups eventually chimed in. They enumerated the statistics of repression during the period of dictatorship, warning that if the son also rises the horrors will return.

The negative campaign, however, labored under the weight of its own non sequiturs. The sins of the father were not those of the son.

Besides, the negative campaign completely missed the essential attractiveness of the Bongbong candidacy. The Bongbong campaign pitched the message of national unity in the face of all the challenges we face. This was the antithesis of the campaign of divisiveness, vilification and vengefulness associated with the rule of Cory Aquino and then her son.

The other side of this rule of divisiveness and vilification was executive incompetence. The faults attributed to Cory are now also attributed to her son.

The Palace misunderstands the basis of Bongbong’s attractiveness to today’s voters. The self-righteous ruling faction blames the voters themselves for “romanticizing” the Marcos period.

Close analysis of the Bongbong voters reveal that the candidate attracts the strongest support precisely of those age segments that lived through the martial law period. The Bongbong campaign tried to sell their candidate by appealing to the young voters. The campaign, however, best resonated among the more mature voters.

What does this tell us?

Our voters, it appears, recall the aspect of Marcos rule that the Yellow cult tried to play down for years: effective and visionary leadership that took a strategic view of the nation’s needs.

Sure there was looting. Sure there was repression. But it was during the Marcos years that dramatic steps were taken to modernize our bureaucracy, build the major infra projects we needed for sustained growth and mount an agricultural revolution. It was a period where Filipinos were encouraged to stand proudly in the community of nations – too proudly, perhaps, that we actually aspired to be the regional power.

That is what resonates: the memory of decisive leadership. That memory contrasts all to sharply with the diffidence, the lethargy, the complete absence of a work ethic that characterized the duplicate presidencies of mother and son.

It is, by the way, the same longing for decisive leadership that propels the Duterte candidacy – notwithstanding the mayor’s propensity to say outrageous things.

During the Marcos years, there was a certain pride in achievement that animated the nation. In the two Aquino presidencies, there is only laid-back, minimalist executive presence.

Therefore, the surging Bongbong candidacy can only be read as a repudiation of the low quality of leadership the Aquinos offered. There is no other way to read this candidate’s attractiveness to voters.

Bongbong’s current lead in the voter preference surveys is probably more secure that the lead Duterte enjoys in the presidential contest.

Unless Duterte intended to keep up his controversial profile to maintain his lock on the media space, he appears prone to scandal. His mouth is like a time bomb waiting for the big flap.

By contrast, Bongbong has protected his lead by disappearing from the headlines and quietly consolidating his position. He even skipped the unsanctioned vice presidential debate last week, forcing his rivals to attack an invisible target.

He has, himself, maintained a dignified campaign that avoided personal attacks on his rivals. He did not need to mount such attacks. The lead was his to soberly maintain.

There is some of his father’s astuteness in the manner Bongbong has so far conducted his campaign. Although his nominal standard-bearer is weak, Bongbong somehow managed to align his campaign with those of the presidential candidates in their respective bailiwicks. He cut separate deals with local political leaders independent of his nominal tandem.

It has to be granted: his is a deft political hand.