Depleted

The latest available opinion poll gave President Ferdinand R. Marcos a mere 14 percent approval rating. Sara Duterte enjoys nearly triple that rate.

The political grapevine is abuzz with talk of an even more recent poll – still embargoed – that puts the President’s approval rating at single digits. That is an appalling measure.

No sitting Filipino president has ever scored so low in the public opinion polls. It is hard to imagine how President BBM could manage to climb out of that resounding rejection by the public.

Approval ratings, by inference, measure another thing: political capital.

The polls are clearly indicating that the President’s political capital is severely depleted. If the presidency were a bank, this one invites a bank run.

Political capital is what enables political leaders to accomplish things. It makes the leader capable of drawing public support for his initiatives. With his political capital almost fully depleted, the nation is in peril of leadership paralysis – if that has not already happened.

The President’s rating has been declining over the past few months over the worsening state of the economy. One poll says more people report involuntary hunger than during the depths of the pandemic. Over the past few months, his approval ratings have been on a tailspin.

The precipitous drop in President BBM’s approval ratings happened after the crude arrest and hasty deportation of former president Rodrigo Duterte. Last Friday, underreported by the mainstream press, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos throughout the archipelago and in many places across the globe turned out to protest the treatment of Duterte.

The detained former president has become a lightning rod for all the discontent building up because of what many perceive to be a do-nothing presidency. It was bad enough that President Marcos was described as weak and indecisive. Now more and more people see him as completely unmotivated.

To compound things, judging from available photographs, several doctors see signs of Marcos’ deteriorating health. This could invite all sorts of political adventures, producing even more uncertainty in our political situation.

I have it on good source that a “legacy campaign” has been ordered by the Palace to boost the President’s image. But what this presidency has is not a public relations problem. It is a performance problem.

The President’s ratings are tailspinning. His political acceptability is on a free fall. The sloppy handling of Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest is not the root cause of this. It is simply the spark that set off what now seems to be a roaring prairie fire.

In the face of what appears to be a rapidly failing presidency, every political faction will behave according to what serves their respective interests best. With its depleted political capital, the ruling faction will not have much – except for hard cash – to manage the unfolding of events.

The pro-Duterte politicians will try to use the former president as a rallying point to improve their political positions. It will be to their advantage to deepen the public’s discontent.

The ambitious politicians identified with the President’s camp will act more frantically to arrest the political collapse. In their haste, they will be prone to make even more tactical errors.

The yellows, the pinks and the reds have no ability to determine tactical outcomes. They will cling to the fringes of the Marcos camp for lack of any other option.

Businessmen are severely disappointed by the way the national budget was mangled to serve partisan goals. They are bothered by what seems to be a rising tide of corruption that will ultimately make the domestic economy untenable.

The poor has increasing difficulty coping with inflation. While the aggregate inflation numbers may suggest a moderation of the problem, food inflation runs rampant. This is what harms the poor most.

What might save the Marcos presidency eventually, even as it merely crawls along towards the end of its term, is the sheer lack of a viable political alternative on the horizon. The price for solving the problem of phlegmatic political leadership might be one most of us are unwilling to pay.

There are more and more people willing, entirely out of exasperation, to deal with the possibility of an institutional break from the prevailing order. Whatever such a break might look like, no one seems ready to fully elaborate.

If nothing dramatic happens over the next period, then the nation will be interred in a political purgatory. In this twilight zone, we have leaders but no leadership. We have extensive cash aid programs to buy popularity but no break-out plan for the nation’s development.

With each passing day, opportunities will pass us. We have the poorest infrastructure and transport investments in the region. Internal trade is hampered by protectionist policies such as cabotage that brings profit for local shipowners but expensive food for everybody else. Our education system cannot prepare the next generation of Filipinos for the next economy.

Two years ago, we had a presidency that did not have the political will to undertake the radical reforms to pull up our agriculture from subsistence mode. Now we have a presidency that does not have the political capital to do it.

Filipinos are tenaciously optimistic. But today there is little for our hopefulness to cling to.

Dynastic politics, with the culture of corruption on which it thrives, denied our people the firm, determined and clear-sighted leadership the nation needs.