The applicants

For a moment there I thought he might be on fentanyl or kush, with a lot of money to burn. But after a little more thinking, I decided I would include Willie Ong in the list of senatorial aspirants I’m voting for next year.

Willie who?

Willie Ong – he’s a cardiologist, he’s a decent man, which is much more than I can say about several of the incumbent senators. Dok Willie is not in the top 24 of any of the recent surveys on Senate aspirants. But he has topped a social media poll on the so-called senatoriables, and he’s now officially a candidate of the once ruling Lakas-CMD.

Would decency and competence matter in the 2019 midterm elections? It’s easy to be doubtful, considering the quality of many of the officials that previous elections have given the country.

Still, with economic problems such as inflation and jobs consistently topping public concerns, perhaps voters would be more keenly aware of the need for efficient governance. Perhaps voters would be scrutinizing more closely the fitness for the job of those who are applying to serve the public.

This is an idea that every voter must take to heart as the election season heats up: consider yourself an employer needing to fill a job vacancy, and you are screening each job applicant.

Advocates of clean elections, among them the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) and the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente), are promoting this idea as they conduct voter education activities in preparation for the 2019 polls.

Will it work? Even if it works only to a certain extent, it will be progress.

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For the average voter in a country where about 40 percent of the population is classified as poor, the needs that must be met by the job applicant are mostly short-term or even immediate. The vacancies to be filled are often in the gut and in the pocket.

This is why incumbent officials seeking reelection as well as wealthy candidates have an edge: they have the means to meet those short-term needs. The largesse is distributed through grassroots leaders – mostly barangay officials who are supposed to be non-partisan but are actually working for politicians.

Voters tend to pick the candidate who not only gives them P500 each or a sack of rice during the campaign, but who can also be relied upon to continue providing various forms of assistance to his constituents throughout his term.

Corruption and illegal activities? If a politician knows how to share the wealth with his constituents, he’s still OK. That’s how drug dealers and jueteng lords manage to enter politics, with the anti-money laundering police sleeping in the pancitan or noodle house. The crook will have a problem only if a political rival exposes the anomalies, files a formal complaint, and worse, doles out the same kasal, binyag, libing (wedding, baptism, funeral) and emergency assistance to the community.

Still, we’d like to think the average Filipino voter is increasingly assessing candidates with long-term considerations in mind: the need for honest and competent officials who can deliver good governance, which is needed to create an environment wherein people need not depend on political patronage for survival.

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The results of the early surveys on the Senate race can be confusing, probably because the list of aspirants will become final only on Nov. 29, the deadline for the substitution of candidates.

Two surveys conducted during the same period (Sept. 15-23) by the same pollster Social Weather Stations Inc. (SWS), using the same 1,500 respondents, but commissioned by different individuals showed slightly different outcomes. Sen. Cynthia Villar topped the poll commissioned by presidential political adviser Francis Tolentino, who is himself a Senate aspirant, while Sen. Grace Poe topped the one sponsored by Alde Joselito Pagulayan of Lakas-CMD.

Explaining the discrepancy, a representative of SWS said that the two sponsors submitted different sets of potential candidates. This gives credence to a complaint expressed to STAR editors some years ago by a Cabinet member who had hoped to run for the Senate, but groused that his name was never included in the list of possible aspirants submitted by sponsors to the pollsters.

Regardless of the polling firm or the survey sponsor, however, the same names keep cropping up among the top five or six likely winners.

Premature campaigning (no such creature, the Supreme Court has ruled) and unabashed efforts at name recall don’t seem to be working for certain potential aspirants. Politicians and their handlers are racking their brains trying to find a common denominator, apart from gender and famous surnames, for those who have consistently landed in the top five in the surveys conducted this year by SWS and Pulse Asia.

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Political analysts stress that it’s still too early in the game for survey results on the Senate race to be reliable. This should be good news for those who aren’t getting into the winning circle or the so-called Magic 12.

Increasingly, however, the seats up for grabs are looking much less than 12, since several reelectionist senators – notably the four women – even at this point already look assured of victory.

This is probably among the reasons why none of the political parties has completed a full 12-member slate. Instead they are simply adopting guest candidates. Better to focus on the victory of only a handful than to spread precious campaign resources too thin.

With fewer candidates, voters may take the time to get to know the aspirants better. And Dok Willie’s seemingly quixotic quest could stand a chance.