A fall, a surge

The November 2014 Pulse Asia survey has an incorrigibly political country talking about election scenarios yet again. That Vice President Jejomar Binay’s voter preference rating has continued to fall, from 31 percent to 26 percent, should come as no surprise; he is continuing to suffer the fallout from the ongoing Senate blue ribbon subcommittee inquiry into alleged corruption in Makati City when he was mayor. On the other hand, the voter preference rating of Sen. Grace Poe has jumped, from 10 percent to 18 percent.

To be sure, “continued to fall” and “jumped” create the possible misimpression that the surveys are telling one story, and just one story. In fact, it is too early to tell. The steady rise in Binay’s ratings during his successful campaign for the vice presidency looks inevitable now, but it would have been a mistake, during the campaign period, to seize on each uptick as tending in only one direction. Surveys are snapshots in time.

Having said that, the “surge” in Poe’s ratings is worthy of discussion, because of two factors: Her ratings as a possible presidential candidate have in fact gone up and down in the last several months, and she has steadfastly declared that she is not ready for the presidency. Between the September and November surveys conducted by Pulse Asia, however, she “overtook” Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago. The “spike” in her regional ratings has been especially noteworthy: up 9 percent in the National Capital Region, up 11 percent in the rest of Luzon, up 11 percent in Mindanao.

In contrast, her voter preference rating as a possible vice presidential candidate has been consistently high and well ahead of everyone else’s: 31 percent in September, for example, and 33 percent in November.

It may be that a considerable plurality of voting-age Filipinos has seen her as a future vice president ever since she topped the 2013 Senate race; the idea of the new politician maturing in the second highest post is one that recommends itself readily. (Something of the same sort happened with Gloria Arroyo, after she topped the Senate race in 1995 and became a leading candidate for higher office in 1998.)

It is also possible that the “rise” in Poe’s ratings as a possible presidential candidate is a direct result of her continued refusal to entertain a presidential run. Her reluctance, by all accounts genuine, seems in this day and age a potent recommendation for the office itself.

This is in marked contrast with what Binay calls his lack of hypocrisy—he has been upfront about his desire to succeed to the presidency. This is admirable, up to a point. That point is reached when the Vice President’s response to the accusations raised and evidence offered at the Senate becomes only political.

The “drop” in Binay’s voter preference rating, then, is also worthy of discussion, because of two factors.

He has not done himself any favors by refusing to appear at the Senate hearings, despite laying down certain conditions. He has also harmed his reputation as a take-charge politician by directly challenging one of his political enemies, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, to a debate, only to back down on the lamest of excuses. (A human rights lawyer during the darkest days of the Marcos dictatorship, Binay said he did not want to be perceived by the public as enjoying an undue advantage over the nonlawyer Trillanes.)

He has also apparently embraced a single-minded strategy: to avoid the issue of alleged corruption in forums where there is some form of accountability (the Senate hearing, the debate that should have been conducted by the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas), and to go straight to the people: at the market, in friendly conferences, on provincial sorties. This is an old strategy, and history teaches us that it can be an effective one. Convicted-then-pardoned-plunderer Joseph Estrada, now mayor of Manila, is only the most recent (and highest-profile) example of political salvation by election.

But, with allowance for other, perhaps equally plausible, interpretations, we argue that the Vice President’s marked “decline” in successive survey snapshots is the result of serious charges raised in a credible forum, essentially left unanswered.