Pandemic, politics, and the elections

The period for filing of candidacies for the May 9, 2022 national and local elections begins on Oct. 1 and will last until the eighth of that month. That’s not too far away, so it isn’t surprising that political parties and personalities with plans to run have been prominently mentioned in the news.

Most notable is the internal rift in the ruling PDP-Laban coalition between the party’s acting president, Sen. Manny Pacquiao, and vice chair, Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi, when the former questioned the latter’s act of convening a meeting of the party’s national council meeting in Cebu on May 31. It led to open feuding between Pacquiao and the party chairman, President Duterte. During the PDP-Laban National Assembly on July 17, Pacquiao got ousted as party president, a move that the senator and his allies have not recognized and are challenging.

As for the opposition, the 1Sambayan coalition got off to a bad start when it was launched in early June and nominated people who would later on deny that they would be running for president or vice president. Then there are the wild cards, Sen. Panfilo Lacson has confirmed he will run for president with Senate President Tito Sotto as his running mate. Given that a lot could still happen between now and October, expect the news cycles to be clogged with these developments and other related news.

In the meantime, the pandemic continues to rage in the Philippines. The NCR is set to go on ECQ again this week, along with some other provinces. Since the start of the lockdowns in March 2020, the NCR, which accounts for around 30 percent of the country’s GDP, has not gone lower than GCQ. The government’s vaccination program is in its early stages, and it is very likely that the virus will continue to pose a threat to lives and livelihoods well into 2022, particularly with highly infectious and dangerous mutations proliferating around the world such as the Delta variant. This means it will also take a considerable period of time for the economy to normalize and recover, and this will have significant impact on various sectors of the economy and in the lives of people.

Given those circumstances, the handling of the pandemic and plans for the country’s recovery will be one of the key issues in the coming elections. The pandemic response touches on a number of critical concerns for the voters: efforts to protect us from the risks the virus poses to public safety, disruption in people’s lives and livelihoods, restricted movement and travel, the shutdown of the economy leading to job losses and failed businesses, exposure of the poor state of the country’s health care system, the challenges to education—the list goes on. The elections will go down to who can convince the voters that they are the most capable of getting the country and people through this most difficult time, and get the economy back on its feet to help improve people’s lives.

For incumbents, this means being judged on their performance during this pandemic. Challengers, on the other hand, will need to show that they can do a better job and have more effective plans and policies for dealing with the stubborn crisis. With the vaccination program underway, it may appear that the incumbents have the advantage as they control official resources and are at the forefront of COVID-19 response and relief efforts. But the economy hasn’t fully reopened and record numbers of people are without jobs, getting hungry, or losing their businesses. Any mistake or controversy between now and election day can lead to that advantage going up in smoke.

Whether the candidates like it or not, the pandemic and how it has been handled will have a decisive influence in the May 2022 elections. Improved conditions will likely lead people to go for more of the same, whereas continuing misery, or the perception that things have remained dismal right up to election day with no end in sight, is liable to result in a clamor for change and new leadership.

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Moira G. Gallaga served three Philippine presidents as presidential protocol officer, and was diplomatically posted to the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles and the Philippine embassy in Washington, DC.