Unimportant

We have just conducted, without much incident, what is very likely one of the more unimportant electoral exercises in our political history.

Being unimportant, there were few surprises in this exercise. Those expected to win won. The hardest thing is not counting the votes; it is finding out what the significances are that would merit the great expense we incur for conducting things like this one.

One analyst is probably correct in describing the last elections as having returned us to the depths of traditional politics. The rule of dynasties tightened. Political parties decayed.

This probably explains why vote-buying was proliferate. So proliferate, in fact, that the Comelec tried burning the house down to rid us of the rats: an ill-fated (and illegal) attempt to close down the economy by banning large cash withdrawals. A great plague of institutionalized stupidity seems to have swept our land.

People tend to sell their votes when they nurse no passion about the politics of the day. Last week, votes were bought openly, flagrantly and cheaply. The choices were so indistinct that votes commanded such low prices. Deflation grips our electoral politics.

When the prices at which votes are sold fall to such lows, this can only be an indicator of the insignificance of choice. It does not matter much if the vote is given to Tweedledee or to Tweedledum. Life remains the same.

The cheapness by which votes were bought signals a depreciation of the electoral process. It indicts the narrow political class that controls public choices for making the exercise entirely meaningless.

It is bad enough that our political party system is seriously deteriorated. It is worse that our elections degraded into a mere parlor game for the political clans to play.

To say that the last elections were entirely personality-driven is to understate the malaise. In Monday’s elections, even the personalities at play were mere proxies of the actual power-players.

This could not be electoral democracy at its best. It is deceptive shadow play at its worst.

Palace mouthpieces try very hard to inflate the significance of the last exercise by vainly describing it a referendum on the present dispensation. How could that be? The present dispensation represents no comprehensive policy package, no clear vision and no unique agenda we might have a referendum on. The last electoral campaign was not a debate on anything. It was a mere popularity contest.

To call the last exercise a referendum on nothing in particular is to further deceive the people. It is bad enough to ask our people to go through the strenuous rituals of voting even if they had no meaningful choices to make. It is contemptuous to impute to our voters choices they never made.

To be sure, there was no dancing in our streets in the wake of Monday’s vote (like there was actual dancing in the streets of Pakistan after Sharif’s party won the elections there this week). Voter turnout was relatively low here last Monday — suggesting enough voters intelligent enough to see through the meaninglessness of it all.

Palace spin doctors court ridicule by claiming that the poll outcomes strengthen the President’s mandate. How could that be?

Midterm elections, in our case, mark the transformation of single-term presidents into lame ducks. They weaken rather than strengthen presidencies as ambitious politicians freely position away from the shadow of a finite chief executive.

The last senatorial elections reduced rather than increased the LP bloc. Bam Aquino, who capitalized on his physical resemblance to his martyred uncle, is the only LP candidate to survive the grist.

It is the NP that now holds the biggest bloc in the Senate. It is the group that will decide the distribution of power in that chamber. It is a bloc full of ambitious men ready to position for the 2016 presidential contest.

The UNA grouping in the Senate, if it is able to reel back in the NPC senators, is actually larger than the NP. Any alliance with the NP bloc will be on its terms clearly.

Historically, the modus operandi of the senators is to make things difficult for the Chief Executive in order to win concessions. The classic illustration of this was when the US bases treaty was on the table for a Senate vote. When Cory Aquino refused to yield to the myriad demands of the senators, the bases were gone.

Under the veil of asserting this chamber’s “independence”, expect the senators to inflict the usual modus operandi on a sunset presidency.

President Aquino invested the prestige of his office and his own popularity on only a few local government aspirants. The two most notable are Alfredo Lim in Manila and Ed Panlilio in Pampanga. Lim lost in a tight race to former president Joseph Estrada. Panlilio was completely creamed by Lilia Pineda.

That does not add an exclamation point to the power of the President’s endorsement.

The only notable development in this election is the emergence of the Catholic “white vote”. This, and the traditional command vote of the INC, are not easily disposed towards supporting Aquino’s 2016 endorsement.

Ironically, the biggest winner in this muddled election is a non-candidate. The Vice President fielded his daughter Nancy Binay to keep his name fresh on voters’ minds and his political machine oiled.

Nancy’s respectable performance, without having to try too hard, certainly solidifies Jojo’s position as the man to beat in the election that will matter.