The media template for campaign coverage is pretty straightforward, it involves little more than following the candidate’s campaign. Such coverage noted details about where the candidate went, who was with him, who met with him, endorsed him.  They report the size of the crowds and other noteworthy circumstances. For most of the campaign, candidate Duterte received no more nor less number of reports than other candidates.

IT IS often said that Filipinos love elections.  They enjoy the color and the noise. They delight in the thrill of a contest. Much like their obsession with beauty pageants, the elections hold up for voters some kind of dream, the belief in new possibilities.

Statistics do show a high level of participation in the exercise. Eighty-one percent of the 54 million registered voters take to the polls to cast their ballot. We like to believe these statistics confirm that democracy has taken root in firm and fertile soil.

But the regular cycle of elections has not represented progressive gains in political maturity. Elections are still essentially popularity contests. Voters choose who they like, but also who they trust and who they believe will provide the best kind of leadership to the nation. But the basis of popularity is concentrated on the first, someone who people take to because of personality and traits that attract them. As such the basis of popularity seems disconnected from capacity for leadership and governance.

As the press have incorporated more of these elements of popular appeal in the coverage of politics, elections have opened the door for the entry of actors, showbiz personalities, broadcasters and champion athletes into city hall and Congress; along with the politicians with name recall for their long experience or public exposure, or inherited name.

Based on these factors, politics in the country represent a competition among those who are already known, those with the means to ascend in social and political status, acquiring economic and political power. Politics seems to have closed the circle of power beyond the reach of the majority.  The majority are needed only to cast their votes.

Elections restore voters to their central place, a source of legitimacy for worthy or less worthy candidates, including those belonging to long-standing political clans. Now as in the past, the political dynasty depend on the election to assure their continuity.

As many observers now rue, the cycle of elections has not made that much difference in the lives of the poor. But they continue to vote just the same.

Gains and Setbacks

There have been some advances: Corazon Aquino restored the institutions of democracy and devolved political power to local governments. Her successor, Fidel Ramos achieved economic breakthroughs and initiated fiscal reform.  Benigno Aquino III, proved it was possible to check corruption in high places and created a better environment for economic growth.

Cynics dismiss these as insignificant small measures in the light of historic failures. But history teaches that democracy is built step by step. Certain conditions have to be established so that freedom and equality before law can flourish.

The very popular Joseph Estrada lasted only two years. He was driven out of office by related developments, a failed impeachment trial in the Senate and a second round of People Power demonstrations. The support of the military for the public clamor for his resignation sealed his fate. His supporters, mostly from poor communities, countered with their own round of demonstrations to protest Estrada’s ouster, an early sign of a deepening social rift in the electorate.

Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo succeeded Estrada to the presidency, serving the remaining four years of Estrada’s term. The best educated and most experienced president in the country’s history, she won the election in 2004, defeating the popular actor Fernando Poe Jr. She sustained fiscal reform, but her term was hounded by questions of legitimacy and corruption as she quashed five impeachment motions against her in Congress. The Ombudsman filed corruption charges even as Arroyo won a seat in the House of Representatives. After Rodrigo Duterte won the presidency, she was acquitted by the Supreme Court in July 2016.

These achievements and setbacks deserve more critical discussion.

But each election should draw attention to the stranglehold of power elites through the years and the maintenance of a status quo. The extensive fusion of business and political interests in the conduct of national affairs, the deeply rooted poverty, the lack of infrastructure and other issues have left growing numbers at the bottom of the social pyramid, marginalized and out of reach from the benefits of economic growth. Even with a strong and thriving economy, Filipinos remain starkly divided into haves and have nots, into communities that experience sharply divergent realities.

This will not change without new laws to enable the wider distribution of created wealth, to insure that those producing or inheriting wealth share the means as well as the gains of production. Politicians elected to seats in the Senate and Congress play a key role in bringing about these changes. But is it realistic to hope that they would legislate against their economic interests?

The review of tax laws is overdue. The same holds for elections, especially campaign spending. But these are in the hands of politicians many of whom have hollowed out the system of any intent to share goods or impulse to serve the public.

A political culture that operates on self-interest and nothing else has captured Philippine democracy and gamed the system of government for their benefit. Elections will continue to sustain the political class. Political dynasties will continue to perpetrate their members in power,  creating enclaves of political control and corruption all around the archipelago. These have succeeded to make elections their instruments, perverting the purpose of the vote to their own advantage.

The failure of elections to bring about change  reflects the betrayal of a people by their elected leaders, a self-inflicted wound on Philippine democracy.

Elections 2016

As early as 2015, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, a one-term representative in the Lower House of Congress and a seven-term mayor of Davao City in Mindanao presented a candidate profile of a game-changer.  He was hailed as crime-fighter whose mailed fist approach to crime-fighting in his city identified drugs as a major cause of lawlessness. His tactics to clean up Davao City continues to be part of the narrative legend, sustained during the campaign and supported by media reportage.

Duterte was not well-known in Metro Manila and other capital areas in Visayas and Luzon. He started a speaking tour nationwide to popularize the idea of federalism in January 2015 and captured national media attention, securing the necessary political traction for his potential as a presidential candidate.

Media coverage of the non-candidate in 2015 was remarkable for the kind of attention it gave to a politician from the provinces. Media played into the game plan, appealing to natural curiosity by reporting the candidate’s claimed uncertainty: Was the city mayor from Mindanao running for president?

Very cleverly, Duterte played coy, denying ambition for national office, each denial whetting the appetite for more about the man. By the start of the campaign period in the first week of February 2016, enough Filipinos had turned their rapt attention to this new face in the national scene.

Mainstream media had laid out the same template of coverage for Duterte’s campaign as for the four other presidential contenders. Media-wise, Duterte sustained his draw for coverage with the use of color and then some. The candidate played to the stands, now a comic, then a firebrand reformist, then your ordinary neighborhood tough guy with a law degree. Spewing obscenities onstage, on-cam and off, Duterte caught the imagination of ordinary folks who thought he was much more like them than your average politico.

Rape joke

In April 2016, Duterte’s media coverage spiked when he recalled how he had gone to the Davao City Metropolitan District Command Center (Metrodiscom)  to check the scene after the hostage crisis.  He said he saw the lifeless body of one of the hostages, an Australian missionary who had been raped before she was killed.  She was so beautiful, he said in Filipino, as mayor he should have been the first to rape her.

The offensive statement was met by laughter and media reports served to popularize Duterte’s outrageousness which some described as authentic and refreshing.  Of course, campaign handlers were quick to fix this impression, aided by an orchestrated social media exchange.

The press for various reasons submitted to the obvious tactics of manipulation and gave him every bit of publicity on mainstream media. Duterte was the most colorful personality among those aspiring for the presidency, and that alone was reason to pay him more attention. Attention would have been fine, but it was also coverage without questions, reportage bereft of inquiry and investigation. In other words, media reports served well the need of every campaign for free publicity.

Unlike everyone else on the presidential slate, Duterte was a fresh face. Unlike Jejomar Binay, Duterte had not been subjected to Senate inquiry and journalistic investigation.  Unlike Grace Poe or Mar Roxas, he did not come with the polish of the upper and educated class. Duterte was the man to follow, just for being himself.

Media Template for Coverage

CMFR noted how mainstream media coverage did not indicate the lead that would make Duterte president until public opinion polls shared their findings.

Media picked up Duterte’s rise in surveys within the Metro Manila area in November 2015.  Both Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed him with higher voter preference than Binay, Poe, Roxas and Santiago. Pulse Asia recorded 34%  for Duterte and Poe as the closest competitor, with  26%.  SWS showed 38% for Duterte with Binay and Poe tied at 21%. The surveys were conducted before Duterte announced his candidacy.

During the campaign, opinion polls saw the rise of Duterte’s star as early as April, the second full month of the official campaign period.

Pulse Asia showed him with 30% against Poe’s 25% and SWS showed him at 27% against Poe’s 23%. Duterte maintained the lead until elections in May.

CMFR’s monitor of electoral coverage noted how news attention served more the purpose of the candidate, rather than the need of citizens to examine those seeking their support.

The press must share the blame for the failure of elections to serve as instruments of real change.  The press does its part, closing the circles of political leadership, preventing the entry of new blood, new names and faces.  News media can grow in speed and extend its reach. But journalism will not change the political culture without exerting the values of democracy.

Media Times does not pretend to understand fully the role of the press in the political rise of Rodrigo Duterte. But this is a question that deserves attention. Did the press provide the free publicity for Duterte’s campaign because he was a harbinger of change; or because he was colourful, entertaining, outrageous and obscene, the kind that reporters cannot resist?

CHEERS TO CNN Philippines’ Network News for recalling Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s statements regarding his on-again, off-again 2016 presidential run in light of his most recent announcement that he would indeed go for the Presidency next year.

On Monday, Nov. 23, 2015,  Network News ran six stories on the Davao City Mayor when he announced his presidential bid, among them “Diño-Duterte substitution a last-minute strategy,” which recalled statements Duterte had made as early as 2013.

The report included the following quotes from Duterte this year:

• Feb. 19, 2015
  “If only to save this Republic, I can run for President. I can make this sacrifice if only to save this country from being fractured.”
• June 14, 2015
  “I will stand by my position that I am not seeking any national office in the next year’s elections, much more the presidency. I don’t even know if I could be the presidential candidate…”
• June 21, 2015
  “I will consider the suggestion of my friends and supporters.”
• June 25, 2015
  “If my daughter will run, I will retire in 2016. Matanda na ako. I’m already 70.”
• Sept. 29, 2015
  “I’m not running but if I change my mind, I’ll do it here. Dito ako nag-umpisa, dito din ako magtatapos.”
• Oct. 12, 2015
  “After all, there was no ambition for me to aspire for the presidency. The country does not need me. I find no need for it. I guess it is fate that wills that our long journey together should end this way.”
• Nov. 1, 2015
  “Nothing has changed in my position about it (presidential candidacy). I don’t have the stomach for it.”

Although “he maintained an air of disinterest in a possible presidential run but nevertheless fed the press with mixed messages that kept journalists hooked like no candidate ever did (“Duterte Mania and Human Rights: A Distrubing Lapse in Coverage,” Nov. 5, 2015),” the mayor shifted gears. He claimed disappointment over the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) ruling on the disqualification case against Senator Grace Poe as the trigger behind his decision to run. The SET had junked the petition to unseat Poe on Nov. 17, 2015, which 2013 senatorial candidate Rizalito David filed on August 6.

Martin Diño, a Quezon City barangay captain and PDP-Laban’s deputy secretary general, filed last October his COC as his party’s standard-bearer with Duterte as substitute candidate. Diño withdrew on October 29.  Duterte filed his COC for president through his lawyer Salvador Medialdea Friday, November 27, well ahead of the December 10 deadline set by the poll body for substitute candidates.

[feelbox]

DURING A campaign rally in Quezon City last April 12, presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte recalled how during his first year as mayor in Davao City, a prison riot broke out in the Metrodiscom Detention Center.  He recounted how Jacqueline Hamill, an Australian missionary who was ministering to prisoners, was gang-raped and killed along with other hostages. Duterte expressed his anger over Hamill’s rape. He recalled his thoughts at the time: because the missionary was so beautiful, he, the mayor, “should have been first. What a waste.” (“Nagalit ako kasi ni-rape? Oo. Isa rin ‘yun. Pero napakaganda. Dapat, ang mayor muna ang mauna. Sayang.”)

Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte during the CNN Philippines-sponsored Townhall in UP Diliman held on February 18, 2016. | Photo by Lito Ocampo

The video of Duterte recounting the episode went viral on the internet. Mainstream media promptly picked it up. Online and offline, media captured every reaction, criticism and response from the candidate’s supporters and from his critics. Women’s groups and his rivals for the presidency expressed outrage and scored Duterte for his remark. The US and Australian ambassadors commented that rape should not be trivialized or tolerated. Four bishops expressed grave concern about the candidate.  International news organizations took note of the Davao mayor’s remark, comparing Duterte to US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Duterte expressed anger over calls for him to apologize, and refused to do so. On April 17, a day after Youtube user Beatboxer ng Pinas uploaded the video, Duterte said in an interview outside his home in Davao City: “I am willing to lose the presidency. Do not make me apologize for something which I did which was called for at the moment.” According to him, he made the remarks out of anger, and that his being from a poor family is to blame for the way he talks. He said he was sorry “to the Filipino people,” but refused to apologize to any particular person or entity.

But the Duterte camp released the candidate’s formal apology two days later, on April 19: “I apologize to the Filipino people for my recent remarks in a rally. There was no intention of disrespecting our women and those who have been victims of this horrible crime. Sometimes my mouth can get the better of me.” On this same day, Duterte initially said he did not know about the statement. He declared much later in the evening of April 19 that he did approve it, but without reading it carefully.

Editorials and columns took the candidate to task. But news accounts seemed content with reporting whatever Duterte said, without question, failing to challenge the lack of logic in his defense —  that his statement had been said in anger, as this did not explain the remark, “mayor should have been first.”

One exception was CNN Philippines anchor Pia Hontiveros, whose interview on April 18 with Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, chairman of Duterte’s political party, Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) insisted on clarifying what Pimentel meant.