Friday, March 09, 2007 Wenceslao: Third Force and Pangilinan By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
FIRST off, I have long been suspicious of surveys, especially the Social Weather Station (SWS) and Pulse Asia types. This is because we are clueless about who their respondents are. Surveys depend heavily on the biases of respondents, meaning you can manipulate survey results by simply targeting as respondents those with particular biases.
Metro Manila, for example, is not the Philippines and majority of the voters there preferred Fernando Poe Jr. over Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for president. So you know more or less where the wind will blow there if you toss a survey question about who people there will vote for in the senatorial race. What about us outside Metro Manila?
Anyway, I will oblige these supposedly respected survey firms and discuss a survey result. I am referring to the one conducted by SWS in February that had Sen. Francis Pangilinan on top. Pangilinan was originally a guest candidate of the Genuine Opposition (GO) but chose to campaign independently. As a result, GO dropped him.
Of course, there's nothing final yet in the campaign because the elections are still in May. Pangilinan may still drop from his perch especially now that GO candidates are ganging up on him. Besides, it will be difficult for him as an independent to translate his popularity into votes considering that he may not be able to deploy watchers nationwide.
But I like the message that Pangilinan topping the survey has sent. I am one of those titillated by the idea of a Third Force standing independently from the Arroyo administration and the political opposition. My view is that majority of the Filipinos are disillusioned with traditional politicians that populate the two major political groups.
Proof is the failure of the political opposition to muster the crowd for its oust-Arroyo movement following the surfacing of the “Hello Garci” tape. That shows that while many dislike President Arroyo, they also are wary of the political opposition. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, people opted to stay in their homes.
Pangilinan, while not the ideal candidate, embodied the Third Force dictum. If he is merely playing wisely the administration and the opposition cards by standing in the middle, then he unwittingly provided the disillusioned with an alternative. Of course, it may have helped that his wife is a Sharon Cuneta and he has KC for a daughter-in-law.
Pangilinan said he could not be with the GO because it is led by former president Joseph Estrada, whom he opposed for years. He could not also be with the administration because he criticized President Arroyo after the Garci tape scandal erupted. Which is precisely what I have been saying about why a Third Force is needed in the elections.
But Pangilinan is solo, meaning he may not be able to make much of a difference. The ideal would have been for well-meaning political parties and even civil society and militant groups to coalesce and come up with a more formidable challenge to established alliances of traditional politicians. That would have changed the complexion of the polls.
These political parties and civil society and militant groups, however, didn’t have confidence in the strength of their organizations and the causes they espoused and didn’t have faith in the capacity of voters to choose better alternatives in elections. The result: they are clinging to the lapels of traditional politicians.
