Wenceslao: I don’t think Villar can recover

WHEN Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano suddenly surfaces in a presscon after weeks of silence, it should be resbak time. Cayetano is with the Nacionalista Party (NP) whose standard bearer, Manny Villar, lost four percentage points in the recent Pulse Asia survey and who is now trailing top presidential bet Noynoy Aquino by 12 percentage points.

Cayetano is the male, though lesser, version of Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago. Have a target to hit? Just let Cayetano loose. Indeed, he immediately went to work this week. In an NP presscon, Cayetano coined Topak (Trapo, Oportunista at Kamag-anak, Inc.) ni Noynoy as being behind the smear campaign against Villar.

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“Topak” is a Tagalog word. I googled its definition and found “may topak” in the website “Tusong Matsing: A Filipino-English Dictionary.” May topak: a person with mental problem; a stupid person. “Topak ni Noynoy” is therefore like “Gikumot-kumot, sa dakong kamot”---it has double meaning. It’s euphemism for “autistic” or “Abnoy.”

The NP considered Villar’s ratings dip in recent surveys as a result of the issues raised against him, like the presentation of proofs that contradicted his claim of his being previously dirt poor and reports of him being the secret candidate of President Arroyo (thus, Villaroyo). To them, Noynoy and his Liberal Party (LP) are the issue churners.

A simplistic analysis does breed a simplistic response, thus the letting loose of Cayetano and the dredging of mud to throw against the LP standard-bearer. NP’s e-mail brigade is also busy circulating increasingly nasty claims against Noynoy, many of them rehashing the autistic claim. On TV, their pol ads now portray NP as genuine opposition.

Will the shift in strategy work? The next survey can answer.

But if you ask me, I don’t think it will. Voters’ thinking can be swayed by propaganda, true, but only to a certain extent.

That point is summed up by this Abraham Lincoln quote: “You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.” (Now, replace “people” with “voters.”)

Villar’s success in the ratings game can be largely attributed to his spending for campaign ads like there is no tomorrow.

But he so bombarded TV viewers with his jingles and claims—for a long time now and in big doses---that the point of saturation, or should I say monotony, has been reached. The NP ads can no longer offer anything new.

And while the effect of the intense propaganda drive has plateaued, the truth of the claims in his campaign ads is slowly but surely being exposed. Those ads presented a Villar covered in a shell of credibility. But credibility is a fragile material; once it cracks, it can no longer be restored. And his critics have successfully shattered that credibility.

Without that credibility, Villar and NP spin doctors cannot hope to regain lost ground by merely rehashing old issues against Aquino in the hope that it will make them look good. Surveys have shown that Noynoy’s support has remained solid. Instead, it is Villar’s base that has been proven to be fragile, built as it is on a campaign ads mirage.

What should worry Villar is not that Aquino will continue to pull away from him in the surveys; rather, it is that Erap Estrada is nibbling at his (Villar’s) lead.

(khanwens@yahoo.com/ my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)