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Friday, March 29, 2024

Homestretch run

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Unless something really disastrous and game-changing happens between now and Monday, it looks like Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has an excellent chance of being elected 16th President of the Republic. This is the main story line of the latest and last The Standard Poll-Laylo survey, which appears in today’s issue of this newspaper.

Duterte (32 percent), who captured the imagination of voters hungry for change, kept his substantial lead over his main rivals, Senator Grace Poe (25), former secretary Mar Roxas (22) and the fading Vice President Jejomar Binay (15) in the much-anticipated survey. Pollster Junie Laylo’s findings also point to a low “undecided” vote of four percent and a “soft” vote of 13 percent—still enough to keep the race tight, assuming Duterte makes some big-time errors before Election Day and causes voters to desert him in droves.

Between the margin of error of the survey (1.8 percent) and the undecided-soft factor, it is still possible that Duterte can be beaten. Also, there is Duterte’s famous penchant for shooting himself in the foot and the fact that yet another unknown and damaging episode in his less-than-pure past catches up with him—things that could still derail his victory as the ultimate outsider and consign him to the role of the provincial phenom who nearly made it in the big leagues.

At this point, Duterte leads in nearly all economic, geographical, gender and other categories, according to the Laylo survey. His near-total lock on the Mindanao vote (where he polled more than 80 percent in his home region of the Davao provinces) is unprecedented; his spectacular polling on the island more than makes up for his coming in second or third to any combination of Poe, Roxas or Binay in the other regions.

(For the elitists out there reading this, Laylo explains that Duterte’s favorable numbers in the ABC economic class doesn’t necessarily mean that the rich are fully behind him. The “A” part of the class—the really affluent—makes up only less than one percent, by population, of the entire category; the entire class is dominated by the “C” middle-class sub-group, where Duterte’s law-and-order message is always welcomed.)

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Of course, stranger things have happened before and leads like Duterte’s have been known to evaporate almost overnight. Binay’s come-from-behind victory over Roxas and Senator Loren Legarda in the 2010 vice presidential race is often cited as the template here—even if pollsters like Pulse Asia’s Ronnie Holmes say they actually tracked Binay’s last-minute charge right before that election.

It’s not accurate to say that the presidency right now is Duterte’s to lose. But what Laylo is saying is, the probability of Digong making it just got higher—even after Senator Antonio Trillanes’ bank account exposé, which was covered by the survey period.

I guess we won’t have long to wait to find out. But if I were Duterte, I’d stay home and not take any calls from anyone.

If I were his rivals, I’d bring out the heavy artillery and fire at will. There’s still that tiny window, after all.

* * *

Speaking of Trillanes, it looks like he totally miscalculated again, just like he did when he burst onto the national consciousness in 2003, when he emerged from the obscurity of his Navy desk job and morphed into a mutineer at the posh Oakwood Hotel in Makati. His much-publicized attempt to tar Duterte with charges of ill-gotten wealth has misfired, with the mayor emerging none the worse for the senator’s exertions.

Trillanes, of course, is no stranger to becoming a victim of his own poor strategy. The Magdalo coup plot of which he was a vital part was immediately contained and he and his band of mutineers were hauled out of the hotel like common criminals, discharged from the service, charged with treason and detained for more than seven years.

But Trillanes, unlike his mutinous brethren, found opportunity amid disaster, parlaying his newfound infamy into a successful Senate run. Except for a few of Trillanes’ co-conspirators, most of the Magdalo cohort have remained in jail, forgotten by their now-famous brother-in-arms.

In the Senate, Trillanes used old-fashioned demagoguery to spin tales of high crimes—not indiscriminately but only against those who were out of favor with those in power. He became a high-priced gun for hire, attacking people like Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes (who committed suicide after being pilloried by Trillanes in the Senate) and Vice President Jejomar Binay.

Trillanes even attacked the man widely believed to have worked for his release from jail, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, who could only shake his head at the ingratitude of the former mutineer. Enrile’s feelings toward Trillanes these days are shared by the senator’s fellow soldiers, many of whom see him as a traitor, a bully and an ingrate.

Trillanes’ latest exploits as the nemesis of Duterte follow the same template he used against Reyes, Binay and others who had the misfortune of becoming his targets. If Duterte becomes president, I think Trillanes will have finally met his match.

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