Campaign endgame

THE ENDGAME is usually about tying up loose ends and finessing the final touches required to ensure a smooth victory. But, as in the case of what seems like the most bitterly contested presidential election in recent Philippine history, it may turn out to be a pell-mell, elbows-flying dash to the finish line, with the candidates refusing to yield and using wiles, condoned or not, to gain even a nanosecond of advantage to be the first to heave themselves at the tape.

Mere days before May 9, the charges are still flying thick, fast and loose, such that Grace Poe, for instance, had to call a press conference just to deny the rumor boiling on social media that she was on the verge of quitting to give way to Mar Roxas, and thus ensure the defeat of frontrunner Rodrigo Duterte. A counterpart online petition, in fact, exists: that Roxas give way instead to Poe, again as supposedly the only way to stop the specter of a Duterte presidency.

Meanwhile, VP candidate Bongbong Marcos has aired suspicion that some manipulation is going on; his noticeable slide in the surveys, he said, appears to be a ruse to condition the public mind to his eventual loss to Leni Robredo, whose rating has soared at his expense.

It’s a prelude to cheating, he warned—a warning that, ordinarily, would be met with sympathy and concern, except for the rich fact that this time it’s the dictator’s son complaining of poll fraud, something he would presumably know much about given his late father’s record when it came to stealing the vote. “The rotten election” was how Newsweek bannered the 1986 snap election that the dictator had called in the hope that the poll exercise under his thumb would reboot his presidency after the stain of Ninoy Aquino’s assassination. Instead, the violence and fraud of the 1986 election, captured in color by the world’s journalists who had descended on the country, only hastened the demise of the Marcos regime.

You’d think that episode in history would have taught subsequent leaders that cheating in elections is so high a crime that it can lead to revolution and the ouster of anyone foolhardy enough to tamper with the people’s will. That, in any case, is the warning issued by many in the Duterte camp in the past days—that Roxas and the Liberal Party should think twice about pulling the rug out from under what is supposedly sure to be a Duterte victory, or there would be hell to pay. Independent senatorial candidate Walden Bello has waded in by saying that while Duterte may appear to be a threat to democracy with his iron-fisted ideas, the greater threat is scaring people into accepting that cheating is justified to prevent such a nightmare presidency from happening.

Wait. In fact something of the sort happened not too long ago. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her powerful machinery pulled out all the stops to stoke the electorate’s fears about actor Fernando Poe Jr. being handed the reins of power. When the scare-mongering apparently didn’t work, Arroyo resorted to the unthinkable: On tape, she was heard instructing then Commission on Elections official Virgilio Garcillano to ensure that she won with a comfortable 1 million votes over her rival.

Was that brazen thievery of the people’s will ever punished? No; a large swath of the population quickly moved on and thought no more of the crime. Today, Duterte supporters are being egged on by their leaders with warnings of cheating and wholesale fraud, on the unquestioned assumption that their candidate is already assured of victory. In one more twist in the magic-realist yet nothing-but-pragmatic world of Philippine politics, that candidate is not only said to be supported by Arroyo and her minions, he has also promised to release her from hospital detention.

Impunity does not erupt from a vacuum; in this case, impunity is Arroyo escaping accountability for the poll sabotage in which she directly participated, and other candidates learning all too well that they, too, can attempt the same without consequences. The public must guard against any camp undermining the polls on Monday. Vigilance is of utmost importance to make sure the Comelec does not drop the ball, or worse, engage in partisanship. But if one is to be outraged by election cheating, that outrage cannot stop at one’s opponent. The heinous crime of election theft should be much bigger than even this presidential brawl.