A curse or boon at Club Filipino?

By: Amando Doronila - 9 years ago

The endorsement of Interior Secretary Mar Roxas as the Aquino administration’s presidential candidate in the May 2016 elections saddled him with either a curse or an express vehicle to the presidency.

In declaring his endorsement at Club Filipino, President Aquino said that after careful consideration of a short list of probable successors, he determined that Roxas was the one “who has shown exemplary and true integrity,” the one fully ready to continue the daang matuwid (straight path) reforms of his government after he steps down next year.

Roxas won Mr. Aquino’s endorsement despite his dismal ratings in public opinion surveys on presidential preferences, which showed him running third behind front-runner Sen. Grace Poe, independent, and Vice President Jejomar Binay, head of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).

In an act of faith, the President expressed hope that Roxas’ ratings would go up once he is “introduced well” to the people.

“If his current numbers are low, this means we have to work harder on making him well-known,” he told the Liberal Party (LP) faithful who celebrated the endorsement in a pep talk at Club Filipino. The gathering was more of a nostalgia trip for the Aquino family’s supporters than a presentation of Roxas’ qualifications for the presidency.

Club Filipino is flooded with memories of Cory Aquino, the President’s mother, who was inducted into the presidency in the club after the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship in the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution.

Club Filipino brought back bad memories for Roxas. Six years ago, it was at Club Filipino, where Roxas gave up his presidential bid in favor of Mr. Aquino in the 2010 elections. Roxas was defeated by then Makati Mayor Binay in the vice presidential contest.

Today, Roxas and Binay face a rematch for the presidency in a grudge fight. The trauma of the 2010 defeat haunts Roxas, with the poll ratings confronting him. Will he fare better this time?

Straitjacket

In endorsing Roxas, the President defined the overriding issue in the 2016 elections. The choice is between that of “who will continue along the straight path and fully break the system of patronage” and that of “who is always looking for a way to bring us to the cycle of corruption and poverty.” The issue is now joined between Roxas and Binay.

In accepting the President’s endorsement, Roxas locked himself into the daang matuwid straitjacket of Mr. Aquino’s platform of good governance.

“As the President said, this is just the start. We shall continue to fight. I am Mar Roxas. I accept the challenge of our bosses: To continue, expand and fight for the straight path.”

In an emotional response, Roxas said: “This endorsement … is a big honor for me, Mr. President. I promise you I won’t sully the legacy of your parents, I won’t sully your name, I won’t stray from the straight path. I will give my all for this right.”

How much weight?

He gave the pledge, without the assurance that his endorsement would significantly boost his electoral prospects. This raises the question, how much weight does the endorsement of the President carry in the next elections?

Mr. Aquino withheld the endorsement until after the delivery of his last State of the Nation Address (Sona), which enumerated the accomplishments of his administration during the past five years, hoping that the Sona would turn the tide of public opinion in favor of his chosen successor and bail him out of his adverse ratings in the surveys.

To be sure, as the LP standard-bearer, the whole weight of the party machine and the administration’s resources will be thrown behind Roxas, enjoying the government’s advantage of incumbency.

At this early stage of the electoral campaign, it still remains to be seen whether the Sona and the endorsement would swing the tide in Roxas’ favor.

Not a clone

In the June poll conducted by Pulse Asia, only 10 percent of the respondents said they would vote for Roxas, putting him a distant fourth, while 30 percent said they would choose front-runner Poe, and 22 percent backed Binay.

When Roxas declared, “I am Manuel Roxas, I accept the challenge of our bosses” to run for President, he seems to have sent the message that he was distancing himself from the Aquino legacy and trying to get out of the shadow of the Aquino oligarchy, or that he was responding to criticism that he was appearing as a clone of Mr. Aquino. These are symptoms that being perceived as a surrogate of the President and being held hostage to daang matuwid pronouncements of the Aquino legacy is a heavy drag to Roxas.

The Roxas family belongs to that branch of the political class that traces its social and political pedigree to eminent public figures, like Manuel A. Roxas, grandfather of Mar Roxas and the first President of the independent postwar Philippine Republic, after having served as a brilliant finance secretary and Speaker of the House under the Commonwealth government of President Manuel L. Quezon.