Is Poe’s survey bubble unstoppable?
The sortie of independent Senators Grace Poe and Francis Escudero to South Cotabato province over the weekend on the invitation of Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) officials pushed to the rocks attempts by President Aquino to rig the selection of his successor and block the election of a hostile administration in next year’s presidential polls.
The foray sparked speculation that Poe has decided to run for President with Escudero as Vice President despite accepting Mr. Aquino’s invitations for them to meet to discuss the issue of whom to endorse as the administration’s official candidates for the top government posts in 2016.
The visit was immediately seen by political observers as a rebuff to Mr. Aquino’s initiative to manage the succession issue in terms favorable to his legacy as he winds down the last few months of his six-year term.
This development followed the standoff at the Palace mediation meeting last week among Mr. Aquino, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, Poe and Escudero that ended without a consensus on the contentious issue of who among the presidential aspirants would be endorsed by the President.
The Palace meeting took place amid expression of concerns from leaders of the ruling Liberal Party over what they perceived as the “unstoppable” surge of the popularity survey ratings of a dark horse in the presidential race—the junior senator, Grace Poe.
Recent opinion poll surveys have put Poe as the front-runner among prospective presidential contenders and as the pivot of a “third force” in a currently narrowing four-cornered presidential contest in the Philippine multiparty democracy.
P-Noy’s concern
Mr. Aquino has expressed concerns over the continuity of his reforms on good governance if the successor administration would block them.
These concerns were also voiced a week ago by Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., vice chair of the ruling Liberal Party (LP), who warned that the endorsement of Poe as the administration’s official candidate in the 2016 presidential election was “unstoppable,” unless Roxas could prove his winnability.
Belmonte later qualified his statement, saying that while Roxas expects Mr. Aquino to endorse his presidential bid next year, he has to prove he can win, otherwise the President will have no choice but to endorse the “unstoppable” Poe as the administration’s standard-bearer.
Belmonte said Roxas, the presumptive LP presidential candidate, was “unpopular with voters, holding only third or fourth place in the latest voter preference polls.”
He added, “All the President’s candidates, particularly Roxas, are qualified and will give effective and honest government that will make a difference, but Mar should prove winnability by a dramatic increase in ratings.”
Puffery of bubble
There’s another way of interpreting “unstoppable,” that is, it can also be interpreted that since Poe’s ratings are based on survey results, puffed up by media hype, these rest on nothing more solid than bubble.
There’s the danger that as Poe’s supporters pump up the bubble, the more likely it becomes unstoppable for the bubble to blow up in their faces and wipe out Poe’s presidential ambitions into thin air.
Poe has to offer something more solid than the puffery of a bubble to present a credible bid for the presidency and to be considered a serious contender.
There is very little to show she has anything more solid for her qualifications to be President than survey ratings.
Even the administration is bewitched by these ratings, up to a point that Mr. Aquino has been trying to forge a winning coalition on which to anchor his administration’s legacy—an alliance underpinned by Poe’s ratings.
In this coalition building, Poe’s value as a main pillar seems overrated. Poe is a creature of early poll surveys that show her as the front-runner, but these surveys do not allow her to call the shots in the coalition building and hold the administration hostage to her demands.
This effort on alliance reengineering is now unraveling. After a six-hour dinner hosted by Mr. Aquino in Malacañang on Wednesday night with Poe, Roxas and Escudero, the meeting hit a standoff and failed to come up with a consensus on who of the three would be chosen as the official candidate of the administration and of the Liberal Party in next year’s presidential election.
Nothing but hot air
The Palace meeting reportedly did not touch the issue of who among Roxas, Poe and Escudero would be running for what position in the 2016 election. There was no decision yet on who among the three would run for President or Vice President.
Mr. Aquino has kept all three guessing with the ambiguity of the Oracle of Delphi. He is expected to announce his presidential candidate after his last State of the Nation Address on July 27.
Mr. Aquino explained that that he considered the choice a measure of his own success. “Success can be measured by your ability to train your successor or to name your successor,” he said.
Asked what was discussed during the Palace meeting, Mr. Aquino said, “All the parties that were there agreed that a lot of changes happened in our society … during the past five years. And because the transformation has been good, there is a need to sustain them.”
The Inquirer has reported that the President is a firm believer in “the numbers,” referring to voter preference surveys. Poe is leading the surveys while Roxas is running behind Vice President Jejomar Binay, and even behind Mayor Rodrigo Duterte of Davao City.
Poe, as a creature of early poll surveys, lives inside a world of make-believe of a bubble that is not sustainable, that is volatile, whose results are likely to go up and down depending on the moods of the electorate as the election approaches.
As a grim reality, Poe faces the issues of her glaring deficit in administrative experience, which she has failed to enhance during her last three years in the Senate. She cannot offer the electorate hot air all the time to make up for the shortfall.
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