Boring

Tell me: Will the nation be better served if we soup up, rev up and fire up the electoral process so that it polarizes our communities, clutters our visions and produces blood in the streets?

Do we really need, at this time, the faux excitement of a close and bitter contest, the scorched earth policy that happens after such contest is settled, the precariousness of any minority leadership elected to place in the aftermath of fragmented elections?

Will our economy be better served by escalating uncertainty, fueling unwarranted passions and inducing confrontation?

Will our future be better served by generating intense partisanship defined by contending personal ambitions and factional interests?

Will our collective sanity be better served if we allow our politics to be enveloped by a cloud of demagoguery, intrigue, name-calling and mudslinging?

I don’t think so.

On the contrary, I think we have tended to inflate the importance of politics at the expense of nurturing our economic life. Our elections have been expensive and divisive exercises that created discontinuities not only in the governing elite but in economic policies as well.

Politics colonized the other dimensions of our life. It has sapped our creative energies. It engrosses us too much and distracts us from the more worthwhile activity of wealth-creation.

With next May’s general elections looming, it is to the interest of politicians to raise the temperature, draw lines of confrontation, create doomsday scenarios and impute political motive to everything. They need to inflate their importance in the scheme of things. They need to flagging popular interest in who wins what and who beats whom.

And so it is that we now hear Erap loyalist Boying Remulla and his colleagues in the PMAP – that gang without a candidate – warning of massive cheating in the next elections. They forget to tell us what the incentive for cheating will be if the contest turns out to be terribly lopsided.

And so it is that the beleaguered senator Panfilo Lacson and his equally beleaguered gang are now busy attacking the Supreme Court for what they claim is a politically motivated ruling that paves the way for the reopening of the Kuratong Beleleng case. In an effort to escape accountability before the law they do not hesitate maligning a grand institution.

And so it is that with no evidence at all in his hand, Senator Joker Arroyo now says the Sandiganbayan ruling lifting sequestration on Eduardo Cojuangco’s San Miguel shares was part of a political arrangement.

It is to the mass media’s interest to pick up stray and irresponsible statements such as those mentioned above. They fill space. They create talking heads to populate our television screens.

But they do nothing to enlighten our lives and unveil our options.

It might be preferable to keep the forthcoming elections as boring as possible. And it will become so if the contest is lopsided and predictable.

In a lopsided contest, there is little incentive to overspend. There is little danger of a cliffhanger tabulation that will multiply anxieties every time a counting machine breaks down. It will reduce the pressure for candidates to compromise with power brokers and special interests. It will diminish the possibility for clashes among determined followers of rival political camps.

More important, a boring presidential contest will probably open a forum for building public consensus on tough policy decisions that need to be taken. Such a contest will likely produce a robust mandate that will pave the way for a widely supported and secure presidency.

In turn, this will assure us a leadership with the capacity for exercising political will on troubling strategic decisions that need to be made. Among these are decisions relating to our energy plan and our urgent infrastructure needs.

A close and bitterly fought contest might provide us much entertainment in the short term. But it will also force the candidates to hew closely to populism and cut deals with special interest groups. That will undermine our nation’s long-term wellbeing.

The indications are that the forthcoming electoral contest might be healthier than earlier expected.

The polarization induced by the ouster of Joseph Estrada seems to have been alleviated. What is left with the pro-Estrada camp is now politically marginal. It is a camp that could not produce a candidate who can rally the former president’s old constituencies, a candidate articulate enough to continue politicizing poverty.

As things are shaping up, the main contest will likely be between President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and former senator Raul Roco. Both are modernizing leaders.

The incumbent has indicated support for changing the system of government towards a parliamentary and federal system. The latter wants the conservation of the present presidential and unitary set-up. This seems to signal an issue-based debate.

If the field of contention indeed simplifies into a battle between these two contenders, then the debate might be more civilized and less antagonistic. We can retire the Lito Banayo types who spew hatred and make hysterical claims.

An Arroyo-Roco contest will eventually even out on the popularity aspect as the choices simplify. The political establishment is largely allied with Arroyo while Roco reactivates the experimental candidacy that began in the 1998 elections.

The self-styled "opposition" composed of pro-Estrada remnants, people running from the arm of the law, over-aged politicians and assorted business interest dependent on political favors will very likely vanish into the margins. Some components of this "opposition" played with fire by conspiring for a coup. They played out their cards and overstretched their credibility.

Without those funny guys from the Erap camp, the electoral contest will be less hysterical. The fight will have less color. The discourse might be boring.

But that is good for us in the long run. It eliminates the anti-modern elements from direct contention.

Should the popularity ratings eventually equalize towards the end of the year, party organization will become a decisive factor in defining the outcome. That will make Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the candidate to beat – and bring to our electoral democracy the rare gift of predictability and continuity we have not seen in a long time.