Amorphous

The pro-administration coalition virtually owns the House of Representatives and Rep. Jose de Venecia is assured of an unprecedented 5th term as Speaker.

As of last count, the pro-administration coalition has secured 195 district seats in the House. That number could grow some more as disputed local contests are settled and as the party-list representatives are determined.

The rabid anti-Arroyo opposition has conceded that the possibility of yet another impeachment proceeding prospering in the House is virtually nil. That is not news. The de Venecia-led coalition’s dominance of the House was entirely expected.

The opposition, a gaggle of individuals with separate agendas and fractured visions, never bothered to do what a responsible political party ought to have done: build a formal nationwide network on the basis of an alternative program of government. All that they have is a transient alliance of convenience among political celebrities with personal ambitions that will likely clash in the near term.

Even if the opposition wins a slight edge in the Senate race, that is ultimately meaningless. By tradition, and due to the design flaws inherent in this institution, every senator once elected becomes a free agent. They are too imperious to be subject to party discipline, too ambitious to yield to a higher goal.

Nearly all of the senators, after all, because of the plain arithmetic of a two-party tendency for senatorial elections and the consistently multi-candidate presidential race, own more votes than the President of the Republic. The winning threshold for a seat in the Senate is about 35% of the votes. The winning threshold for winning the presidency — in a multi-candidate race without provision for a run-off — could be as low as 24% (in the case of Ramos in 1992).

Which is why the Senate often tends to become a dysfunctional unit in the arrangement of governance. Each senator can hold the Republic hostage to his whim. The rest of government is forced to deal with each senator as an autonomous power in an unstructured universe.

This is why the more restrained critics of the Senate, in the peculiar way this institution has evolved in our political culture, call it an asylum. The more strident critics call it a zoo, a chamber where as many species as possible are represented.

The logic of senatorial selection is qualitatively different from the logic of contestation for district representation and local executive positions.

Contestation for local posts involves a brutish struggle for complete dominance over a locality. Which is why nearly all of the violence associated with Filipino elections are related to local contests. Which is why political clans tend to perpetuate — and eventually consolidate both political and economic power in a locality. Voters make their choices on very pragmatic grounds.

Contestation for seats in the Senate is pretty much decided by the passing moods of an amorphous national electorate. Since whoever the senators are will have very little direct bearing on the lives of ordinary citizens, voters make their choices on highly sentimental grounds. It is usual for voters to cast sympathy votes and make their selections on the basis of a fresh event.

For instance, in the early stages of this last campaign, Kiko Pangilinan topped the surveys taken during the time he agonized over joining the opposition or running as an independent. In 2004, Pia Cayetano jumped from way out of the winning column to well within it on the last week of the campaign after a compelling dramatized version of her late father was aired on national television. In the late sixties, Magnolia Antonino, who replaced her husband who died in a crash during the last stages of the campaign, coasted to a seat in the Senate.

The pollsters demonstrate very clearly that the vast majority of voters mix their choices for senator from across the spectrum of contending parties. That is the rule; party straight-voting is the exception.

When the opposition said this elections will be a referendum on the Arroyo administration, they were defying the evidence on voting patterns. When the administration spokesmen assured us during the campaign that superior candidate-presence in all the open contests as well as the “command votes” will carry the day, they were defying the evidence on senatorial voting patterns as well.

In a word, both sides were being silly. They were focused on making the right acoustics rather than dealing with the truly nebulous reality of fragile voter attachments and passing fancies.

Between the hard fought battles for control of local posts and the ultimately individual scramble for seats in the Senate, there is a wide chasm of fundamentally differentiated electoral dynamics. That chasm could only be breached in a moment of great national tragedy.

At both levels there is little case for optimism about the future of party politics in the Philippines. At the local level, clans rule. At the national level, charisma rules the day. Filipino voters do not generally fret about party programs or ideologies.

Did either the Genuine Opposition or Team Unity bother to disseminate their respective programs of government? If such programs do exist, did anybody bother to read them?

However the numbers shape up to be, what is beyond argument is that party politics hardly matters. The outcome should be a cause for disappointment to those who dream of some quixotic “new politics” dawning on this land.

Stop talking about guns, goons and gold. Our elections are about clans, charisma, cronyism and clowns.

Those who master a proper combination of the four Cs will win.