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Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Maxey: The sound of thunder
By Ram Maxey
Bar None
In their simple arithmetic, the BCG camp believed, wrongly, that the INC vote would spell the difference.
MANY Dabawenyos who had expected Mayor Rody R. Duterte (RRD) to win over challenger and former mayor Ben C. de Guzman (BCG) still cannot believe that the margin of victory would be so overwhelming: 315,437 to 163,222, or a whopping difference of 152,215 votes.
One of the reasons behind their utter disbelief was the fact that the Iglesia ni Cristo religious sect which had supported Duterte against De Guzman in the 2001 polls somersaulted this time around and backed up De Guzman in the May 10 elections.
With an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 INC votes going to him, De Guzman was expected to put up a good fight.
In fact, his more vocal supporters were so ecstatic with the INC turnaround that they practically reversed the results of the 2001 polls which Duterte won with a margin of 29,000+ votes and predicted that this time De Guzman would win by the same margin.
It was simple arithmetic, which did not take into account other factors. And so, when the avalanche came last May 10, you ought to have seen the incredulity in their faces as Duterte kept piling up votes in the canvassing and leaving BCG trailing badly behind.
The BCG camp, it turned out, had placed too much weight on the INC votes. They did not, or refused to, reckon with the other factors that entered into the equation. In their simple arithmetic, the BCG camp believed, wrongly, that the INC vote would spell the difference.
But what is 25,000-30,000 votes when a total of 478,659 votes were cast in the mayoralty race? Even if the INC votes amounted to 60,000 for BCG (deducted from Duterte's 315,437), Duterte would still have won by 32,215 votes (255,437 to 223,222). Still a very substantial margin of victory.
Of course, the BCG camp had also banked on what they perceived was voter dissatisfaction over the series of killings of criminals by the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS) which was denounced by the hierarchy of the local Catholic church, pro-life groups and latched on to by the usual militant rabble-rousers.
They showed aversion to Duterte's style of fighting criminality with an iron hand. They believed that so much blood spilled on the streets of the city would cost Duterte the support of civil society. Did it?
Well, in winning over De Guzman resoundingly by 152,215 votes - despite losing the INC's support - Duterte's style of governance was vindicated at the very spot where the Dabawenyos make their political statements every election day: at the polling places. There's nothing more final than that.
The Dabawenyos have spoken. Vox populi. A thunderous sound like no other.
(May 19, 2004 issue)
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