Ambiguous

The latest SWS voter preference survey taken from May 28 to June 14 shows non-candidate Noli de Castro leading the pack with 22 percent.

Actual candidates Raul Roco (19 percent) and Panfilo Lacson (12 percent) placed second and fifth respectively. No one overwhelmingly commands the electoral horizon as the popular and populist Estrada did in 1997.

Ten months before elections are held, voter preferences are highly speculative. The voter preference survey uses a list drawn up by Polistrat, the group that commissioned SWS. While it includes non-candidate de Castro, it excluded possible candidate Eduardo Cojuangco.

Nevertheless, this survey gives us an interesting statistical snapshot. That snapshot will have to be set against other things we know by using other instruments: the electoral capacities of each potential candidate, the alignments of blocs in the political class, and possible alliances that could form on the horizon.

The SWS conducted a comparable poll for ABS-CBN last December. The latest numbers shows some variances in the six-month period between the two studies.

The frontrunners last December appear to have lost ground. Roco’s preference share declined significantly from 24 percent to 19 percent. Poe’s share dropped from 21 percent to 16 percent.

Lacson’s share doubled from 6 percent in December to 12 percent in June. That reflects the huge effort at pumping up his name-recall through a curiously intensive advertising campaign mounted by a liquor brand the senator endorsed and an expensive TV advertising program extolling his achievements.

But at 12 percent, this could not be called a political snowball for a candidate hounded by extreme controversies. In all probability, this could be his peak strength. Should Cojuangco enter the game, he will cut deeply into Lacson’s tenuous constituency.

The only way Lacson could improve his share is for him to be declared the common candidate of a truly functional opposition coalition. But the opposition factions are deeply divided among themselves and the political wind is not in their sails.

For his part, Roco can improve his share dramatically only if he receives PGMA’s endorsement and is thus supported by the dominant coalition. That will be a challenge. Roco has remained a political outcast, attracting nearly no support from the established political factions.

The December survey was taken before President Arroyo announced her withdrawal from the political race. In that survey, she registered a 13 percent preference share. By June, she increased her share to 15 percent.

The survey numbers alone understate her potential. She, after all, commands the ruling coalition composed of the Lakas, NPC and LP. Her net public satisfaction rating dramatically improved from –14 percent to +14 percent between the first and second quarters of this year. In the absence of any large surprises, there is enough reason to expect her popularity to continue its recovery for the remainder of the year.

Should she decide to re-join the political race, she will enjoy the "equity of the incumbent." Veteran political strategist Ernesto Maceda, as a rule-of-thumb, values "equity of the incumbent" at an additional 15 percent of the popular vote.

At the moment, of course, the official line is that PGMA is not a candidate for May 2004.

But that is not a contract written in stone.

With no other alternative candidate capturing the popular imagination, a clamor for PGMA to rethink her options will happen. Her partisans do not have to unduly exert themselves fabricating that clamor.

The December 30 announcement of non-availability for the post has served its strategic purposes. It has blunted bitter partisan attacks on the President and created enough of a respite from politicking for this presidency to do substantial work.

That announcement focused public attention on the fact that excessive politicking is one major source of our national failure to get things done. Public recognition of that fact unavoidably hampers the efforts of other candidates to establish political ground by campaigning early.

Both Raul Roco and Panfilo Lacson labor under the heavy air of that announcement.

On one hand, they need to be early birds in the game because neither of them benefit from the support of established political machineries. If they fail to hold enough political ground early in the game, they could be outflanked by candidates commanding organized political bases.

On the other hand, campaigning too early in the game runs against the anti-politicking disposition of public opinion. They will be seen as trying too hard and nursing ambitions that are too large for them. Their every utterance will be taken as posturing and grandstanding.

Too, by campaigning too early they expose themselves to the possibility of peaking too early. On Election Day, they will be drained of any capacity to create excitement and arouse voter interest. They will look like tired knights, scarred by intense and cruel scrutiny and looking haggard from the long effort.

It is legally possible for Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to contest the May 2004 presidential elections.

That large fact puts an overpowering ambiguity to the political terrain.

It is a dynamic ambiguity. It restrains power brokers from committing to any of the early runners. It stymies the flow of funds to the early candidacies. It inhibits the early runners from devising a clear strategy that will allow them to optimize their meager resources and control variables in an uncertain political arena.

They are like cavalrymen in a sandstorm, unsure of where they are going and unable to accurately define the enemy. They are alternately funny and tragic, prone to tripping on themselves and being injured by causal potshots.

That is the picture captured by the SWS snapshot.

Our voters are reluctant to invest in the early runners. A large number would rather invest in a non-candidate whose face is familiar. A significant number are investing their faith in the incumbent who has declared herself a non-candidate.

This is a statistical picture that can be shaped any which way by those who are able to work the strategic variables and dictate the terms of the contest.