Branding

We are observing the politics of convenience at its height.

As I write this, neither the pro-Estrada nor the pro-administration tickets for the senatorial race is known. Behind the scenes, to be sure, is a lot of frantic horse trading and desperate negotiations.

The formations of senatorial tickets used to be a matter internal to the political parties. But since our political party system was rendered dysfunctional by the design of government mandated by the 1987 Constitution, the formation of such tickets has become a game of acquiring the most winnable candidates by a bidding process akin to the NBA draft pick.

The draft pick method for choosing senatorial candidates has resulted in the shifting of alliances we have seen the past few weeks. Former senators Tito Sotto and Tessie Aquino Oreta have moved out of the main opposition umbrella to join a party aligned with the ruling coalition. So has actor Richard Gomez and, rather strangely, Loran Legarda. Former senator Kit Tatad has distanced himself from the main opposition bloc, very publicly complaining about "political dynasties" overrunning the candidate selection process.

Last Thursday, JV Ejercito suddenly withdrew from the senatorial race. The move was precipitated by the need on the part of the pro-Estrada coalition to open a slot to accommodate Sonia Roco. Her inclusion is a condition for drawing in incumbent Francis Pangilinan into that ticket.

What governs this currently dominant method for candidate selection is the competition for political personalities with the best name-recall among voters. As a general rule, a senatorial candidate should enjoy awareness ratings of 80% or more to be considered viable. The campaign period is simply too short to introduce an unknown personality to voters nationwide.

In order to overcome a low awareness rating, a candidate will have to spend hundreds of millions of pesos in political advertising to quickly raise name-recall ratings within a very short period. By contrast, a political personality with high name-recall needs to spend vastly less to be introduced to the public.

In a situation where the traditional sources of campaign financing are receding as the reliance on political leverage to do business in the country declines, the phenomenon of celebrity politics becomes even more ascendant. Reliance on political leverage to do business is declining as a consequence of economic liberalization and open market competition.

Our method for election-based representation, however, remains in the traditional design more functional during the age when landlords dominated Congress with their ability to deliver command votes and businessmen routinely invested in political campaigns as insurance against a competition-based economy.

Stated more pointedly, we maintain the structures of oligarchic democracy into a new period where the oligarchy has substantially dissipated.

The phenomenon of "political dynasties" happens in a new way under these conditions. People with the same surnames enjoy advantages not anymore because of the oligarchic grip on command votes. People with the same surnames simply enjoy "branding" advantages. Voters are familiar with their names.

Thus, an investment banker like Manuel A. Roxas would have little difficulty breaking into the electoral field. So would an Ejercito/Estrada, an Arroyo, an Aquino, a Pimentel or a Cayetano. They have political brand names with ready-made constituencies and high recall.

It also helps that an old brand name, such as Recto, happens to be married to a showbiz personality with mass following like Vilma Santos. Or a Francis Pangilinan who happens to be married to a certain Sharon Cuneta (a showbiz power in her own right, apart from being the daughter of a veteran politician).

"Branding", more than the traditional control over command votes, explains the clustering of people with the same surnames on the electoral stage. Familiar political brand names are forms of political capital. They bring about high recall that, in turn, mitigates the need to spend large amounts to create voter familiarity within a very short campaign period.

In the absence of stable political party structures, our electoral politics will continue to be overwhelmed by carpetbaggers whose political capital is principally their names. They are free to float from one alliance to another since they do not depend on demonstrated capacity to work up some party hierarchy by exhibiting loyalty or talent.

As in the NBA draft pick or the Hollywood casting game, the "players" on the electoral stage are free agents. They do not have to begin from the bottom rungs of political parties. They can establish high name-recall by being outstanding athletes or outlandish comedians.

What they did before breaking into the electoral field (or what qualifications they might happen to have to hold responsible public posts) does not matter. The only thing that matters is that they have established high name-recall before an audience of free voters who are not bound by feudal loyalties to the dictates of their respective landlords.

Ideology matters very little in this game. Marketing does.

There should be little wonder that the traditional role of political parties in aggregating vote bases has been replaced by advertising agencies packaging personalities for an indistinct mass of political consumers, the voting public.

Bizarre as it might seem, the state of our electoral politics is not unique. It happens everywhere in this age where grand ideologies have died and the appetite for political party affiliation has diminished.

Things need not be as tragic as they might seem at first blush.

Our electoral politics might have been colonized by show business, making it largely a form of free public entertainment. But the serious business of statecraft, of policy-making and direction-setting, remains on the table.

That serious business, although with some amount of inefficiency, is performed by the bureaucracy, insulated from the populism often overwhelms the electoral field. It might actually be a good thing that we treat our politics less seriously and deal with the policy issues more conscientiously.

Like all organisms, political systems soon adapt to changing conditions.