COMMISSIONER Rene Sarmiento, impressed by the recent election in the United States, wants to compel presidential and vice-presidential candidates to hold debates under the poll body’s auspices. This is a bright idea but with the wrong implementation. We believe that the Comelec, in facing the challenges of what will surely be a historic election—the 2010 presidential polls, if they indeed push through—can use its time and resources for more crucial tasks than managing a series of presidential and vice-presidential debates.
This is not to say that Sarmiento was mistaken in saying the debates impressed him. They were impressive debates. Bringing the candidates together to discuss issues is crucial to having an election that provides the electorate with an opportunity to closely observe the candidates. Indeed we’d go further and suggest that Sarmiento is latching on to a growing demand from the electorate to put the spotlight on candidates while minimizing the opportunities for media handlers and spinmeisters to substitute their skills for the candidates’ skills (or the lack of skills).
In 2007, there was a public clamor for senatorial candidates to go beyond snappy ads and to actually face tough questions—whether on television or in print on our pages or online via INQUIRER.net’s historic podcasts featuring candidate interviews—in proximity to the other candidates. Contrary to expectations of public apathy, public attention was keen. Old political myths, such as the invincibility of media and show-biz personalities as candidates, were demolished, when some of these candidates proved ignorant of the issues or incapable of coherent thought; the same applied to the political pros as well.
But what made the effort all the more effective and remarkable was that it was driven by public demand, without the need for official resources. It worked then and there is no reason to think it won’t work in the future. Since democracy was restored in 1987, we have also seen public debates between presidential and vice-presidential candidates. However, in 2004, both President Macapagal-Arroyo and her leading challenger, the late Fernando Poe Jr., declined to debate with each other, preferring carefully selected appearances instead.
The decidedly cynical and undemocratic inclinations of past candidates not to take the risk of confronting each other in a debate are what probably inspired Sarmiento to propose that future candidates for national office be compelled to do so, under the auspices of the poll body. The question is whether such a compulsion would be both legal and fair.
With the American experience in mind, it seems problematic to force candidates into a face-off. When John McCain tried to suspend his campaign to focus, as he put it, on the more important Senate debates on the proposed Bush bailout plan, no one could stop him. A scheduled debate was in very real danger of seeing only one of the two candidates show up, and again, no one would have been able to prevent McCain from not showing up. It was, perhaps, the very real possibility of Barack Obama showing up anyway and hogging the limelight that forced McCain to fold and participate in the debate.
We are confident the public and the media and civic groups, on their own, will compel the candidates to debate each other. We do not believe the Comelec should actively undertake holding such debates. The simple truth is the Comelec is tasked with holding a make-or-break election for the Philippine democratic project.
The electorate expects the evils of past elections—in particular the innovative ways to bastardize the electoral process that have contributed to the ongoing political crisis—to be exorcised and banished if not entirely, then so dramatically as to restore confidence in our institutions and in ourselves; and to finally have a new administration with an indisputable mandate from the people.
Insisting on military neutrality; interdicting and punishing political operators; neutralizing official schemes to subvert the will of the people by guns, goons and gold; and counting the ballots quickly, and accurately, are tasks that would make Hercules go weak at the knees. That being the case, the last thing the Comelec needs, is any new scheme that would divert even a single peso or man-hour from these transcendental tasks at hand.
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