Primaries

Our campaign period begins today. Somehow that comes with a hint of dread.

The past few days, we saw a lot of quibbling over who was prematurely campaigning and who was not. Cases have been filed with the Comelec against all the major presidential contenders for one act of self-promotion or another.

In the end, I suspect, this will be the useless ritual that it usually is.

On a regular basis, in the run-up to the campaign season, people file all sorts of disqualification suits against everybody else. It is not motivated by a desire to push even more work on the election authorities. Our idea of campaigning for elected office revolves largely around impairing the ability of our rivals to do the same.

The past few weeks, I must confess, I paid a lot more attention to the progress of the Democratic party primaries in the US than on the campaign preparations of candidates for our elections.

The primaries in the US are a lot more engrossing. It is a long and comprehensive process where the candidates are analyzed in great detail. The issues are carefully dissected. The slightest shifts in voter preference are studied most closely for signs of changes in public tastes and the popular culture.

Actually, they have a much longer election season in the US. Over a year before elections, the political parties go through a process of selecting their respective presidential contenders.

The job is easier for the party whose principal candidate is an incumbent seeking reelection as in the case of George W. Bush of the Republican Party. The prerogative of the incumbent is respected by his party and no one among the party faithful seriously challenges a reelection bid.

On the part of the Democrats, the process of selecting the standard-bearer is more arduous since the party is challenging a sitting President. Americans usually reelect their presidents – even, as in the case of Bill Clinton, they have been impeached.

At the onset, the Democrats seemed to be at a terrible disadvantage. The general perception was that this party faced a serious shortage of good material capable of beating a sitting president.

Late last year, the Democratic Party contenders were the butt of jokes. The squabbled among themselves and exchanged blunt words in the fraternal debates organized to help the candidates define themselves before the public. None of them seemed capable of posing Bush with a strong challenge.

Before the primaries began, opinion polls showed a succession of preferred Democratic candidates. Initially it was Wesley Clarke. Then it was the voluble Howard Dean.

After about a dozen state primaries, John Kerry, who has been a senator for 19 years, emerged as the likely presidential bet of the Democratic Party. He swept all but one of the first few state primaries. Surveys now suggest Kerry will move from strength to strength in the rest of the state primaries to be held over the next few days.

From a position of near-invincibility, George W. Bush has been battered down by the continuing controversy over the war in Iraq and a host of domestic issues including a yawning budget deficit aggravated by tax cuts that largely favored the rich. In the latest CNN poll, Bush and Kerry are in dead heat if elections were held today.

Suddenly, the reelection of George W. Bush has become less certain. Suddenly, the Democratic Party seems stronger. Suddenly, the 2004 American elections became many times more interesting.

As soon as the Democrats finalize their choice for presidential contender, the Republican Party’s massive propaganda machine is expected to launch what that party’s strategists call an "air war": a comprehensive campaign to box in public perception of the rival party’s candidate anchored mainly on television advertisements.

There is no such thing as "premature campaigning" in the US context. The political debate goes on continuously and partisan operations commence as soon as the candidates become identifiable. Their idea of a campaign is to shape public judgment about what issues are important and what issues are not.

That struggle to define the terms of debate is vital. It delineates the constituencies and enlightens public choice. Elections, after all, are not only about choosing who will wield power. It is an occasion to build public consensus on where the nation ought to go.

We consistently miss out on the opportunity for forge a national consensus in the course of electing our leaders. This is because our campaign process tends to be exclusively focused on personal popularity at the expense of defining what probable national leaders intend to do and what differentiates the philosophy of one from that of his or her rivals.

Filipino voters vote on sentiment, not on standpoint.

That characteristic of our voters prescribes the nature of political campaigns. Campaigns focus on the personal qualities (or flaws) because that is what interests voters.

It is almost counter-productive for candidates, in the heat of a limited campaign period, to dwell on large ideas and complex strategies for the national future. That will bore – or worse, confuse – our voters.

Thus, over the next few weeks, there will be little reason to expect an edifying political debate. The campaign process will not be a process of educating the public – especially since the candidate currently leading in the popularity surveys is running on celebrity power and on nothing much else.

This is the reason why the country’s intelligentsia anticipates the onset of campaigning with some amount of dread. This could be a campaign period with a large amount of heat but very little light.

We seem to be on the verge of wasting an electoral opportunity to invest a vision with formal public support and produce a leadership with a mandate to do what we think needs to be done to carve a more hopeful future for our people.

The campaign that begins today will more likely devalue rather than elevate the quality of democracy we need to prosper. That could have dire consequences over the longer term.

Against the odds, we still hope this exercise will be an edifying one for our democracy. The burden on redeeming this exercise falls on those with a program to sell, not on those who seek to win power by bringing down the quality of our political discourse. They must do their best to move our voters to choose on the basis of issues.