Shuffling

The senatorial slate of the KNP is beginning to look like a tho-roughfare with a lot of people passing through.

Initially, that slate had John Osmeña and Miriam Defensor Santiago. In a flash, the two defected to the administration line-up. They materialized alongside President Gloria when she filed her certificate of candidacy.

One bright morning, earlier this week, Rep. Carlos Padilla mentioned in a television interview that he would campaign alongside presidential aspirant Panfilo Lacson even as he was included in the senatorial line-up of Fernando Poe Jr. Before the day ended, he was dropped from the KNP senatorial slate and replaced by former KBL stalwart Salvador Escudero.

As we understand it, substitution of candidates is possible only if the former candidate withdraws. But Padilla did not sound like he was withdrawing. He seemed determined to continue campaigning as Lacson’s one-man senatorial ticket.

If it is legal for candidates to migrate to other political parties and have their former slots filled up by others filing after the deadline set by the Comelec, then we might see a population boom in the ranks of candidates as the campaign moves on and the elections draw near.

On the same day Padilla migrated back to the political faction from which he originated, Imee Marcos decided to drop out of the senatorial contest and seek a third term of congresswoman. Her reasons for this unusual move are not clear. She simply said the time was not "opportune".

Before she finally announced that unusual move, there were speculations that the rest of the Marcos family was considering supporting President Gloria’s bid. No explicit announcement has been made to that effect, however.

Imee was replaced Thursday by another showbiz personality: Boot Anson Roa.

The Comelec did set January 15 as the deadline for any further substitution of candidates. That deadline was set on the assumption that elections will be conducted using the controversial counting machines procured by the poll body. The ballots designed for use by this machine required printing the names of all the candidates so that the voters will simply tick off those that they favored.

In the light of the Supreme Court ruling invalidating the contract between the Comelec and the supplier of the counting machines, the greater likelihood is that we will return, after all, to manual voting and counting. That means that the poll body will print out the traditional blank ballot on which voters will have to spell out and write down the names of the candidates they prefer.

Whether the Comelec can shift the mode of voting and counting so quickly is a cause of great alarm. But that is another matter altogether.

With the return to the blank ballot system, we will also probably return to the traditionally lax provisions for candidate changes. In the old manual system, substitutions are allowed until midday of election day. If we return to the old procedure, we are likely to see continued shifting of candidate affiliation. More substitutions may still happen.

It is like watching a basketball game where the teams are allowed to recruit new players and field them even as the game is already in progress.

The changes affect not only the senatorial bets.

In the days leading up to the original January 15 deadline for substitution of candidates, the camp of presidential aspirant Raul Roco spread the word that MMDA chairman Bayani Fernando might throw in his hat in the vice-presidential contest after all. Sources close to Fernando say there was no such intention and that no agreement was even negotiated between Roco’s group and the maverick former mayor of Marikina.

The rumor spread quickly because of the general perception that Roco’s vice-presidential candidate – Herminio Aquino – was merely a stand-in until another personality could be found to reinforce Roco’s flagging presidential bid.

Hermie Aquino, after all, did not hide his surprise at being named Roco’s running mate. He was not seeking the slot and, in the light of strong candidates like Noli de Castro and Loren Legarda aspiring for the second most important post in the land, the assignment does seem like a Kamikaze mission.

The leaders of the micro-parties allied with Roco’s Aksyon Demokratiko – namely Renato de Villa of Reporma and Lito Osmeña of Promdi – seemed logical choices for running mate. Like Roco, the two others did run – and lose – in the 1998 presidential contest.

But after the heady proclamation rally held for Roco late last November, both Renato de Villa and Lito Osmeña basically disappeared from public view. Men of such stature, having moved their respective factions to support what now seems to be a quixotic candidacy, do not escape the media eye easily. Their invisibility has to be self-inflicted.

All the shuffling does indicate an unusual tentativeness among the candidate – a tentativeness that merely reinforces the growing anxiety over whether it is physically possible to hold the elections on schedule. Failure to do so could unleash political turbulence that may be difficult to rein in.

The shuffling also indicates the depths to which our political party system has descended. Instead of disciplined party organizations, what we really have are loose confederations of highly individualistic political players. They shift allegiances and formal affiliations at whim. And they do so with great intermittence in an electoral contest that is turning out to be more fluid and more volatile than any recorded in our political history.

With only a few weeks to go before the campaign period for national candidates begins, and with only a little over a hundred days before elections are held, everything seems disconcertingly up in the air.

The candidate currently leading in the surveys has his citizenship under doubt, his ostensible party organization at war with itself and his minor candidates shifting about and changing their minds wildly. As this happens, the poll body is figuring out what to do in the face of the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the contract for counting machines.

The signs are not healthy at all.

It has been said many times that we are a society constantly unable to govern itself. We are cursed by weak institutions and by inferior mechanisms for choosing our leaders. We are burdened by a large proportion of voters who have no inkling about what governance is about and about what exactly statesmanship requires.

Today, it seems we cannot even conduct proper elections, with the method of voting still unsettled and the candidates apparently gripped by overwhelming tentativeness.