Opposition fields
too many candidates

THE PAST week has seen a veritable explosion in pre-election activity with many opposition candidates declaring their intent to take part in the May 2004 presidential election.

Former Senator Raul Roco, of the Aksyon Demokratiko party, launched his presidential campaign on Sunday with a huge rally at the Folk Arts Theater in Manila. Senator Panfilo Lacson of the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP) party, planned to announce his run this past Thursday, while movie star Fernando Poe Jr., also announced publicly for the first time that indeed he was seeking the highest position in the country.

This leaves two ABS-CBN television broadcasters, Senator Loren Legarda, who has announced her intention to run for vice president, and Senator Noli de Castro, who also plans to run for the same position. Legarda has declared she will run as an opposition candidate, while De Castro has hinted he may join up with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

A fight is looming within the LDP as to who should be its official candidate for the presidency. Poe supporters have said that the star won't submit to an official selection process, while Lacson has insisted that he would abide by the results of just such a process. Several meetings between the two sides seem to have not brought a solution, and Lacson is ready to run whether or not he is officially selected by the LDP.

All of this disunity in the ranks of the opposition will only serve to help President Macapagal-Arroyo in her re-election bid, as it will once again split the vote of pro-opposition voters come election day. Roco gleefully admitted in a recent interview that a split opposition vote was good for his candidacy, as it would take away crucial votes from his main rival, Lacson. What Roco didn't say was that it might also deny him crucial votes needed to win the election.

A good example of how even a minor candidate can spoil an election was the 2000 presidential election in the United States, where George W. Bush narrowly won the heavily contested election after Green Party candidate Ralph Nader took away crucial votes from Democrat Al Gore in Florida and New Hampshire. If Gore had won in either of those two states, Gore would be the US president today and the US might not be in the mess it's in now in Iraq. But that's a whole different story. Ironically, Nader is already thinking of running again in next year's US presidential election.

The opposition should be united in their effort to dislodge President Macapagal-Arroyo from the presidency through the ballot box. A split opposition only weakens the mandate of any person who wins the election, leaving them vulnerable to accusations of not having been voted into office by the majority of Filipinos. The 1992 and 1998 presidential elections saw the vote of Filipinos split between a myriad of candidates. In 1992, the results were contested in the courts, with Miriam Defensor-Santiago claiming that Fidel Ramos stole many of her votes, thus denying her the presidency. In 1998, Joseph Estrada was elected into office by less than half of the electorate as their votes were so divided by the other candidates.

What the Philippines needs now is a decisive leader who is not afraid to take unpopular actions for the good of the nation. All of this coddling of corruption and criminal lords should become a thing of the past. Unfortunately, no president yet has been able to rise above the sea of venality and greed that seems to have swept over the country. What a pity.

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Secret deal between Lopezes and Macapagal?

THE RUMORS were swirling once again this week that a secret deal had been struck between the Lopez family that controls and partly owns ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. and President Macapagal-Arroyo when the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approved an increase of 0.12 peso per kilowatt-hour in power prices of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) from January. The Lopez family partly owns and manages Meralco.

The alleged secret deal has the Lopez clan backing President Macapagal-Arroyo and Noli de Castro's run for the presidency and vice presidency, respectively, with full-blast TV coverage, and in return the Macapagal-Arroyo administration would allow the Meralco rate hike and take other decisions favorable to Lopez-owned businesses. Of course, both sides have strongly denied such a deal was ever struck, but the timing of the ERC decision made suspicious tongues wag even more.

De Castro still hasn't announced officially whether or not he'll run with the president, leaving everyone guessing for the time being just what the final line up of candidates will look like. But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that De Castro will probably hitch his future to that of the president. Unfortunately for him, a Poe-Legarda tandem may just rob him of the chance of being vice president. But don't worry, there's always ABS-CBN Broadcasting for him to return too.

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