Political capital

The betting that is going on among investment analysts, policy wonks, reform advocates and others informed enough to be concerned about the country’s drift to the brink concerns this: How much political capital is Gloria Macapagal Arroyo willing to throw into the pot so that her forthcoming State of the Nation Address will give a strong start to averting a fiscal disaster?

I am not joining the betting – although what is actually going on is more allegory than real gambling.

I lost enough money (the grand sum of P200) in actual betting on the percentage of the vote GMA would win over FPJ. I bet on a percentage way above the actual outcome, reflecting the high esteem with which I held the Filipino electorate.

The fact that some sort of virtual betting is going on is a sad indication.

It tells us that there are variable estimates of the fullness with which the looming crisis is grasped by those with the power and authority to do anything about it. It tells us that there is, in some quarters, less than full confidence on the new administration’s capacity to back up its words with political will.

Perhaps the Inaugural Address delivered last week did not give us a sense of a fully developed program to deal with the looming fiscal crisis. We saw some trees but were not privileged with an encompassing view of the forest.

That seems to have enlarged the anxiety rather than relieved it.

For months, the excuse for postponing investments and delaying expansion in existing businesses was the elections. Quite understandably, people wanted to see the results first before they put money in. The choices were stark; the prospects for the economy were widely variable depending on who won the contest.

Now the elections are over. The market favorite won. But a new excuse has emerged for delaying investment decisions: let’s wait a while longer and see what the SONA will say.

The prevailing attitude in many circles was that the Inaugural Address did not provide enough of an incentive for investors to plant long-term stakes in the economy. Investors are still waiting for more definite indications. They are waiting for the new administration to put in its political capital before they put in theirs.

Political capital is not easy to quantify, although it is easy to have a sense of how much a leader has and how much is expended in pursuit of certain policies or courses of action.

Political capital is the sum of goodwill, credibility, organized support and informal command a political leader has. Like normal capital, it may be well-invested and will yield greater political capital. Or, it could be squandered by unwise decisions, spent in pursuit unpopular policies or simply lost by the unfavorable turn of events.

Joseph Estrada, for instance, may be said to have had tremendous political capital when he began his term as president in 1998. He was very popular. He won the elections more than convincingly. He was loved by the masses.

But he squandered that capital, largely by not governing well. He allowed his mandate, his credibility and the stock of trust he enjoyed by wasting his time drinking through the night with his "kitchen Cabinet", allowing known cronies to run wild with questionable deals and stock market speculation, and conducting himself insolently: contemptuous of the norms of punctuality and by his reluctance to preside over Cabinet meeting.

By the time the impeachment crisis set in, Joseph Estrada discovered he had very little political capital left to turn the tide. The amorphous masses he had convinced to entrust him with the presidency remained, well, amorphous. The middle classes were outraged. The business community was distressed. The religious groups were scandalized.

When the breaking point was reached, the military would not stand by him. His own Cabinet members abandoned him. From the streets, the last thread of legitimacy was rudely pulled from under his feet.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo succeeded Estrada in a messy transition that looked like an uprising but was definitely short of a revolution. Her legitimacy was questioned. Conspiracies of every sort festered until one broke out in an actual mutiny.

For three years, she governed with a certain insecurity about the political capital at her disposal. That showed.

Her election to the Presidency should have dispelled whatever insecurity there might have been. That has yet to be shown.

Her win was not a surprise. In fact, it was expected – especially after she mounted what will have to be granted to be a technically competent campaign.

But, as we now see, she did not win overwhelmingly. The effort required to overcome the resistance of voters to her candidacy must have been traumatic for any candidate in her place. The amount of votes garnered by that misfit who challenged her should be disturbing to any mature observer of democratic politics.

More traumatic were the events after the elections. After putting every effort to ensure a credible electoral process, a virulent and irresponsible opposition vainly trying to re-create the 1986 uprising was out in the streets claiming she stole the elections.

Sure, the events of the past few weeks and months might encourage an unfairly diminished view of the political capital she commands. This might help explain what many find inexplicable: the seeming reluctance of President Arroyo to come out swinging, to stake a clear and courageous position that could rally our people behind dramatic solutions to an overwhelming national problem.

A number of acute observers of our national affairs find that reticence unsettling.

The traumatic experience of a bitterly fought electoral contest, however, cannot be accepted globally as an excuse for not exercising statesmanship when it is most demanded. There are certain things that need to be approached drastically. The first among them is the looming fiscal crisis.

If we slide to down to some fiscal purgatory and allow the doldrums to hold our economic growth prisoner, everything else – the Legacy Agenda and all – will be for naught. However diminished or robust our estimate of the political capital there is for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to invest in the next few weeks and months, she will have to invest all of it to prime the economy, assure the investors and galvanize a whole nation to action.

That might sound like high stakes play. But that is what presidential leadership is about.