“Their biggest enemy is time.”
With the time of reckoning fast approaching, all the presidential candidates are now throwing everything they’ve got in the hope that they will win the most coveted prize of all – the presidency.
So, who will it be? There is BBM with his promise of a great future for the country. VP Robredo’s battle cry is that with her at the helm, the democratic institutions of the land will be safe, protected and nurtured. There will also be a level playing field for all. With Mayor Isko Moreno, the country’s WPS interests will be protected no matter what it takes. Senator Manny Pacquiao’s major thrust is the poor and those who have less in life. Senator Ping Lacson’s major asset is competent leadership, experience and his promise for an incorruptible government bureaucracy.
In the most recent survey conducted last March, there was a significant change with BBM going down by six points and VP Robredo gaining nine points or a total shift of 15 points. But considering that BBM’s lead is still huge, it will still take a monumental effort from the Robredo campaign to overturn the significant lead of BBM at least according to that survey. What this survey is telling us, however, is that VP Robredo is gaining momentum which cannot be ignored. Even the BBM camp is also not taking anything for granted and is still campaigning feverishly. Nonetheless, the fifteen-percentage points shift must be giving the Robredo camp a big boost. There were no significant changes for the other presidential bets. Each and every one of them however, are as confident as ever that the surveys do not tell the whole story and that in the end, one of them will end up as the victor.
In a joint press conference last Easter Sunday, Mayor Isko Moreno surprised everyone by demanding for the withdrawal of VP Robredo instead of going after the frontrunner. They should just redouble their efforts because their principal enemy now is time. Going after each other will just distract their campaign efforts. Will they have enough time to overtake BBM, especially the camp of Leni Robredo who appears to be the only one gaining substantially based on the March survey?
There have been other surveys that followed the March survey but with due respect to these surveys, I find some of the results incompatible and contrary to past historical survey data. One is saying that BBM supporters come from all classes but mostly from the ABC classes constituting roughly about half of those surveyed. But based on other reliable sources, it is the Robredo camp where the ABC classes predominate. This is least validated from what we have seen in the multitude of people attending the many Robredo political campaign rallies in the past month.
In a way, the many surveys and trolls appearing on social media are only adding to the confusion. This is one reason why some quarters are advocating that the Comelec put some control on political surveys like putting time limits to their publications. For instance, there should be a ban on political surveys being made public a month before election day so as not to put any undue influence on the voting public. Another survey that appeared is saying that most voters have made up their minds which implies that the election is all but over except for the proclamation. But we know that based on past elections, there will always be a sizable segment of the voting public who remain undecided until election day. As the great Yogi Berra would like to say, it’s not over until it’s over.
What we are simply witnessing is how much impact social media has on the landscape of presidential campaigning. We just have to hope that the public which gets the bulk of their news from social media will be discerning enough to be able to figure out what is true and what is not for the sake of the country. Otherwise, we will be spending the next six years trying to figure out or justify what we did wrong in this May 9 presidential election.
One difference of this campaign from the past is that certain candidates skipped the political debates which are so crucial in making choices on whom to vote. This never happened before. Debates allow the voting public to hear not only what a candidate wants them to hear like in ordinary political rallies. During debates, candidates are forced to clarify their positions on some important and controversial issues. Unfortunately, in this presidential campaign, the voting public was deprived of that opportunity. Hopefully, in spite of all the trolls and falsities on social media, the election results will be what the people wanted and not the Smartmatic counting machines.
