argumentative essay about 2022 election

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[OPINION] Method in the madness: Our 2022 electoral options

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Graphic by Nico Villarete

The following is the first part of a two-part essay. You may read the second part here.

As in previous elections, I have been invited by various organizations to share my take on what truly matters, and seeing through all the noise and smoke that blur our senses as a country. This is a work in progress as political developments unfold. On August 18, I will share in an Ateneo Eagle Watch briefing a more complete version of the framework I am using.

The framework, which can provide citizens a method to understand the chaos of our politics, stands on three main pillars. First , we have to ensure that we have a COVID-safe election campaign and election day that will allow for maximum participation. Second , we have to ensure that we have good choices for 2022 for all positions, both national and local. Third , we have to ensure that we have a positive agenda for the future to be implemented after the elections.

Safe elections with maximum participation

The Philippines must ensure that we have a COVID-safe election campaign and election day that will allow for maximum participation. I believe that we, as a country, must push for the conduct of our elections consistent with our Constitution’s mandate. However, the risk of the whole electoral process, from campaigning to the casting of ballots, being a super spreader should not be understated. The safety of every electoral actor is on the line: voters, election officials and staff, political party volunteers, and even the candidates themselves.

Survey showing Filipinos’ hesitation to vote in 2022 polls alarms watchdogs

On a positive note, however, these risks can be studied to inform policy decisions in necessary interventions that may be specifically adopted. This is precisely what was initiated in the policy note released by Project Participate, a non-partisan, non-profit movement dedicated to engaging and empowering the political participation of the Filipino people, which is led by the Ateneo School of Government (ASOG). The study looked at international experiences, particularly of the US and Indonesia, as well as domestic experience in the conduct of the Palawan plebiscite in early 2021. Another highlight is the study’s estimate that an additional budget of roughly P10 billion is needed to augment the usual budget of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in order to “COVID-proof” the May 2022 election.

Notably, Comelec had introduced innovations that provided alternatives for voters’ registration , such as the mobile registration app. Because of a pro-active registration campaign, there are now 5.4 million newly registered voters. However, we expect a lag on last-minute registration due to the ECQ. Further, the election season has yet to peak, especially during the campaign period and election day itself. We hope to see progressive changes in the guidelines to reflect the realities now posed by the pandemic with an aim of maximizing citizen participation and voter turnout.

Our 2022 choices

The country must ensure that we have good choices for 2022 for all positions, both national and local. We can understand our 2022 choices by looking at the following political blocks: the Duterte coalition (administration), the opposition, and those that claim to be in the middle ground.

The Duterte coalition

Sara Duterte, the President’s daughter and now mayor of Davao City, is the foremost presidential contender from the coalition. Although she has not yet confirmed her bid for the presidency, her meetings with prominent political figures such as the Marcoses and Arroyos, courtesy calls with various local officials, and pending alliances between her Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP) party with other national and local parties seem to give away her eventual move.

As for her running mate, her father President Rodrigo Duterte may as well slide down and heed the call to run as vice president, though he has publicly discouraged his daughter to run. Both politically allied with GMA, former Secretary of Defense Gilbert Teodoro and House Majority Floor Leader Martin Romualdez are also on standby. 

Personally, if Teodoro is chosen by Sara Duterte, I would endorse and support him. I have known him for more than 30 years and I know very well his record as a public official. He is qualified to be president – which is the only qualification for vice-president.

Senator Bong Go, who has been a constant sight in every COVID-19 briefing in Malacañan, has also been remarked by Duterte as a possible presidential candidate. He has managed to maximize his political capital during this pandemic as the Chair of the Senate Committee on Health and President Duterte’s most trusted aide. We may as well see a Go-Duterte tandem in 2022 , if PDP-Laban pushes through with its latest move of endorsing the tandem as its standard-bearers.

I suspect that in the end the Dutertes, like any Filipino political dynasty, will settle this issue among themselves, and that we will see soon enough if it will be Go-Duterte, Duterte-Duterte, or Duterte-Romualdez/Teodoro.

Fragmentation of the Duterte coalition

The Marcoses are also a crucial part of the coalition. Despite his loss in the election and in his electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo, former Senator Bongbong Marcos is still hopeful for his political career. He definitely wants his family to be back in Malacañan. However, we have yet to see his place in the already crowded Duterte line up. For sure, if the Dutertes and Marcoses find a way to combine political forces, they would have a big lock on the Mindanao and Ilocos votes.

HINDI TOTOO: Imee Marcos inihayag ang Bongbong-Sara tandem para sa 2022 halalan

Senator and boxing legend Manny Pacquiao remains with the Duterte coalition for now. In the past months, we have seen Pacquiao’s attempt to expose corruption controversies under the Duterte administration, which was later “rewarded” with his ouster as PDP-Laban’s president. Whether this was enough to keep Pacquiao in line or push Pacquiao to distance himself from the Dutertes will be seen after his boxing fight in late August. I suspect he will break away from the Duterte coalition and may run a credible campaign building on the popularity of our athletes, given the enthusiastic support our athletes in the Tokyo Olympics have been getting. Imagine the return of a victorious Pacquiao and what that will do to his candidacy, especially in Mindanao where he could cut into the Duterte support. 

The Cayetano and Villar block under the Nacionalista party have achieved political strides during the Duterte administration, so it would be nonsensical for them to part ways with the current government. Alan Peter Cayetano was Duterte’s running mate in 2016, then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, then House Speaker. Despite losing Duterte’s backing for continued speakership last year, Cayetano still aligns with the coalition. Mark Villar, the current Secretary of Public Works and Highways, has risen to political prominence on the national scale as he leads the administration’s Build Build Build program.

Lacson, Sotto, and Gordon

Senator Ping Lacson and Senate President Tito Sotto are the first tandem to publicly declare their candidacy as president and vice president (although the official announcement has been postponed to September). They bank on their length of service and experience in the Senate, now that they’re on their third and fourth terms, respectively. Further, they claim to have kept the Upper Chamber’s independence through the years on their watch, especially during the Duterte administration’s supermajority in Congress to which Sotto himself belongs.

Senator Richard Gordon, who is concurrently the chairman and CEO of Philippine Red Cross, also contemplates a higher office. Known for his aggressiveness on the Senate floor, especially during investigations, he has been in the limelight for quite a while. His defining leadership of the Philippine Red Cross in the time of pandemic, which has helped the country, might just be the push that he needs to join the race again . He previously ran for President in 2010.

Lacson, Sotto, and Gordon are all in their seventies. They believe that the main argument in their favor is the experience they bring to the job of president. But frankly, it is difficult to imagine that these gentlemen will be able to excite the young electorate that we now have.

Read the second part of this essay here.

– Rappler.com

Tony La Viña teaches law and is former dean of the Ateneo School of Government.

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People’s movements and the 2022 presidential election

By Diana J. Mendoza

Elections are the means to s/elect leaders and governments. Through elections, we can hold leaders and governments accountable, although with varying success. Through elections, we can ensure that citizens’ interests and needs are represented in the democratic process, although not all the time. Most importantly, through elections, we get to exercise our right to vote, although we don’t always choose to cast our vote.

In elections, political parties usually play an important role. A political party fields its candidates during elections and ensures its candidates win. Winning an election means seizing power in government. The more seats a party wins, the greater its control over the decision-making processes.

In the Philippines, political parties have never reached a 100% mark for relevance and utility during elections. Where votes are based on candidates and personalities rather than party principles or ideals and social issues, political parties fail in aggregating all interests and socializing voters to choose on the basis of party platform, ideology, or performance.

What’s wrong with Philippine political parties?

Since time immemorial, party switching has been common in the Philippines. Politicians gravitating towards the party in power has been a constant feature of every new administration. Is the presidential system of government at fault? Or is the lack of a sense of party loyalty among politicians the culprit?

What may be worse than disloyal party members are the self-serving if not self-aggrandizing party members. Writing about weak intra-party solidarity that marked the Philippine party system, Carl Lande (1967) highlighted “rebel candidates” among “party members who, having failed in their efforts to have themselves named their parties’ ‘official candidates,’ run for office nonetheless despite the fact that by doing so, they will assure the defeat of their party’s official candidates at what otherwise might have been certain victories.” Weak intra-party solidarity is also evidenced by “the existence of many arrangements for mutual help between candidates of opposite parties running for different offices.” This isn’t déjà vu, right?

If not for the political resources that a political party may provide, why would one covet a political party’s support during elections when political party membership is not even one of the qualifications for an elective office? Even the party-list system is not spared from unscrupulous politicians who run under the system without a track record of advocacy for that sector one supposedly belongs to and represents.

Without conventional politics — that is, political parties effectively steering the public space — and with the stakes much higher in the upcoming 2022 presidential election, the alternative is for citizens to resort to creating “people’s movements” at various levels of engagement where they can create popular spaces and mobilize support for their candidates. Through these people’s movements, citizens hope to expand the political space available to them and bring in the concerns of everyday life. If they succeed, they can vote into office the candidates that they support; and if they get luckier, they can initiate changes in the structures of power and domination that operate in the society.

But would people’s movements win the 2022 election?

Like social movements, people’s movements present themselves as symbols of resistance to the dominant powers and to those seeking a path back to power. These movements offer a ray of hope to hold the government (past and present) accountable for its excesses and consequently, initiate process of social change.

Unlike “old” social movements, which were more class-based and sought power, these people’s movements demand democracy. By organizing themselves as people’s movements, they provide an alternative to the conventional form of politics which is more of a power game.

But can these people’s movements win the 2022 election? Hopefully, yes! But only if these people’s movements can keep their popular spaces growing in terms of both numbers and significance and attain the scale and strength capable to persuade voters on the election day in May 2022. But how will they do this? Let’s leave it to the seasoned political strategists to worry about this question.

Instead, we ask, “What can the people’s movements, which have mushroomed in recent months, learn and adopt from social movements?”

Nardini, et al. (2020) in their article, “Together We Rise: How Social Movements Succeed,” offered a framework for explaining how social movements succeed in creating social change. Building on the findings of extant research on social movements, Crutchfield’s (2018) research at the Global Social Enterprise Initiative at Georgetown University, and insights from consumer psychology, Nardini et al.’s framework highlights broad actions leading to the success of a social movement. The framework provides some useful tips for people’s movement organizing for the 2022 presidential election.

1. Build grassroots momentum. Grassroots organizing or local groups targeting and organizing their own communities is the key. Success is likely if individuals and groups at the grassroots level are enjoined and connected both to the movement’s cause and through relationships between the movement’s members.

2. Connect people to the movement. Individuals and groups must feel that they belong and that they matter to the movement. The more they feel connected, the stronger their group engagement is, and hence, makes them feel powerful. When they feel powerful, they are more likely to develop stronger, more certain convictions; and when they do, they become more committed to the cause.

3. Connect movement members to each other. This is important for developing a collective sense of purpose and identity, thereby reinforcing shared views and positions. Regardless of where it takes place, either in shared, physical spaces or in online platforms, what matters more is that these connections must happen.

4. Build a network to connect the movement. To reach optimal efficiency, strong ties (i.e., with close friends) and weak ties (i.e., with distant acquaintances) between members must be nurtured for information and resource sharing. Through the networks and the brokers of the networks, bystanders may be transformed into upstanders.

5. Be leaderful. Movements need not be leader-led or leaderless. Instead, develop a hybrid form of leadership in which multiple leaders and organizations collaborate through coalition building, power-sharing, decentralized grassroots organizing, and collective decision making.

6. Win hearts and minds. Anger, frustration, feeling of exclusion are not the sole motivators for individuals and groups to join a movement. Combining negative emotional cues with positive messages such as strength, inspiration, helping messages can mobilize broader social support and spur action. Moreover, use the power of storytelling — the sharing of a movement’s narrative. More importantly, as movements navigate between physical spaces and online platforms, work toward winning hearts and mind through online connections and interactions in lieu of offline interactions.

How are the people’s movements faring in engaging in these actions? How far are we from winning the 2022 election?

Diana J. Mendoza, PhD is an assistant professor of Political Science at the Ateneo de Manila University.

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