No more coy P-Noy

Enough of this manipulative coyness. Now that a credible survey has shown that a clear majority of voting-age Filipinos do not want President Aquino to run for reelection, Malacañang and (some of) its allies should stop their half-hearted, half-baked but fully dangerous attempts to imagine a draft where none exists.

We all know a draft when we see it, because it is a genuinely rare event in politics. The last sighting was in 2009, when a true groundswell of support lifted Corazon Aquino’s grieving son into the front rank of presidential candidates. Today, there is no such mass-based clamor for a second term for the President, which would require a complicated and never-before-attempted amendment of the Constitution in the first place.

So enough already.

The September 2014 survey of Pulse Asia asked its respondents whether they were in favor of President Aquino running again for the presidency (“kayo ba ay pabor o hindi pabor na tumakbo muli si Presidente Aquino sa pagka-presidente?”). The question was based on the assumption that the Constitution would be amended in time to allow an incumbent president to run for reelection.

The answer was clear in all demographic classes, and in almost all geographic areas. In the largest blocs of voters, classes D and E, 61 percent and 65 percent said they were not in favor of a second Aquino run, well above the survey’s margin of error. About the same proportion, 63 percent, of class ABC voters also said they did not favor a second Aquino presidential campaign.

By major geographic region, the area with the largest number of voters, Balance of Luzon (that is, Luzon but excluding Metro Manila), decisively turned down the idea of a second run: 71 percent. Metro Manila itself was not far behind, at 67 percent. Only Mindanao, at 52 percent, and the Visayas, at an even 50, had tenuous majorities that fell within the survey’s margin of error for regional tallies. Nationwide, however, the outcome was clear: 62 percent of voting-age Filipinos said they were not in favor of President Aquino running for the presidency again, even if the Constitution were amended precisely to allow that possibility.

The Aquino administration, like the Arroyo administration in its early years, has done well in the surveys, and by the surveys. President Aquino himself, despite recent setbacks in his ratings, remains the most popular president in Philippine survey history. It would be sheer idiocy for an administration ally or spokesperson to belittle the latest survey results, as the Arroyo administration did in its latter years, merely because they contradict the administration’s own reading of events.

Senate President Franklin Drilon struck the right note, when he responded to the clear voter preference against a second Aquino presidential campaign by noting that the President does in fact listen to his bosses—that is, to the people. “I’m sure the President is reading the surveys,” Drilon said, adding categorically: “On this matter, he will listen.”

We certainly hope so, because in the last two months or so the President’s personal reputation has been tarnished by the unfortunate attempts seemingly to hold on to political power. We use this phrasing advisedly: The attempts (most recently repeated during the President’s visit to Europe and the United States) are exercises in political perception; given Mr. Aquino’s much-reiterated dislike for constitutional tinkering, his oft-mentioned wistfulness for an ordinary life, and not least his pragmatic understanding of the give and take of political processes, they could not have been otherwise.

And yet just the mere flirting with the idea of holding on to power has diminished his standing among all but his true believers. As we have said in this space before: Amending the Constitution to allow an incumbent president to overcome term limits is Marcosian. Before the need arises for the people to say “Never again,” we should say loudly and clearly: “Enough already.”