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Friday, October 10, 2003
Kintanar: Incumbent and challenger: the difference
By June Kintanar
I wrote this column yesterday morning. President Gloria Arroyo arrived in Cebu City direct from Bali, Indonesia the previous evening.
Of course, the President made use of her time in Cebu attending to several concerns of the city and province, like distributing land titles to some urban poor groups, getting a briefing on the on-going South Reclamation Project and some other activities.
The opposition posthaste accused the President of politicking and premature campaigning. That is, the practice of the opposition that at first made the President decide not to run in the forthcoming presidential election. She felt then that the opposition was playing too much politics that tended to hamper her desire to do good to the Filipino people.
That attitude of the opposition went on which finally irked the President and made her decide to turn around and announce her candidacy in 2004.
The opposition doesn’t seem to know the difference between an incumbent president and a presidential aspirant. As the incumbent president, Gloria has to perform her job. Thus, she goes around the country, goes over some government projects, listens to the problems of the people, does favors to the poor and makes her presence felt by the people.
That, to me, is good governance. It is not politicking; neither is it early campaigning. It is even said that good government is the best politics.
If an incumbent president performs his job well, he will make a good impression on the people. In effect, he wins the hearts and minds of the people, which is the true objective of a political campaign. But remember the incumbent president is not actually campaigning. She is just doing her job. And the people are just happy about it.
The opposition just has to concede to the reality that in an election the incumbent has the edge over the challenger. Unless the incumbent has become too despicable and the challenger is too irresistible, it’s the incumbent that usually romps away with victory.
This precisely is what is happening today. The incumbent president is praise-worthy that it would take an extraordinarily charismatic and good challenger to beat her.
The problem now of the opposition is that it finds it difficult to produce that kind of a man, or woman from its bench.
From among the opposition presidential aspirants only San Miguel Corp. (SMC) boss Danding Cojuangco could well approach the kind of man we are talking about. He has charisma. He has money and he has the needed political organization. But the problem is, as things appear, Danding may no longer pursue his desire to run.
That reported secret conversation between the President and the former ambassador in a room at the Villamor Air Base sometime ago really unravels several mysteries that would roughly explain why it is perceived that Danding is no longer running for president.
Not a few people surmised that it was during that brief and hurried conversation that Danding’s statement was finalized. Did he not say that he would run only if Gloria would not run? Now that Gloria is finally in the political arena, true to his word, Danding is not running.
In fairness to Danding, the SMC boss has his country at heart. He even said once that he actually did not need a job. But the only thing he is afraid of is when his grandchildren in the future might blame him for not offering himself to the nation at a time when he was needed most.
But then it cannot be denied, too, that he has vast business interests to protect. That’s why he has to be sure that he will be in the corridors of power one way or the other. If he needs to be president, he has to be president. But if his interests could be protected in some other way, then so much the better.
Why does he have to pass through a turbulent political life when he can achieve the same thing through good relations with the powers that be?
Incidentally, is his recent “minor” victory at the Sandiganbayan a proof of this?
(October 10, 2003 issue)
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