THE CAMPAIGN

First-World Techniques, Third-World Setting

With a Little Help from (U.S.) Friends

Much Ado about Numbers

Campaigning, Filipino Style

Spinning the News

Half-Truths in Advertising

Campaigns on the High-Tech Road

Songs in the Key of Politics

PHOTO ESSAY

The Presidency as Image

ELECTION PERSPECTIVES

Elections are like Water

Between Tinsel and Trapo

The Enigma of the Popular Will

VOTER'S VOICE

First-time Voter

Regular Voter

Non-Voter

Hope and Elections in Payatas

THE LIGHTER SIDE

Making (Non)Sense of Politics

Election Lexicon

Quickie Quiz for the Politically Insane

BEING a former leftist means being a scarred veteran of many battles. One day we were fighting oil-price or tuition-fee increases, another we were opposing the military bases. We lived through all the elements of a campaign, but in our youth, the setting was a confined stage, a limited arena. It was our school, our community, or a factory that we found ourselves deployed in.

	Many former activists no longer take part in demonstrations. Instead, they use their skills to run election campaigns.

We matured into adulthood in the harshest conditions imaginable. Those involved in campus activism from the 1970s to the '80s survived repression. Those who were trade-union organizers cut their teeth in oppressive working environments, where they learned to bargain for workers' rights and welfare. We marched in rallies under the severe noonday heat and got drenched in the pouring rain or with the stinking water coming out of the nozzle of a fireman's hose. Many of us even spent months, if not years, in prison. We were torture-tested, so to speak.

We acquired certain skills. We could come up with cute slogans that are easily remembered like "Aksyon sa Tunay na Buhay" (which became Bong Revilla's battle cry). We used to draw crude hand-painted murals (now our canvas is the computer-generated, state-of-the-art tarpaulin poster). We painted slogans on walls or pasted anti-Marcos posters in the middle of the night, playing hide and seek with the Metrocom or the cops. We are experts at mobilizing people and have an uncanny ability to fire up a crowd. We dabbled in our version of opposition research when we conducted social investigations of the situation in our school, community, or factory. We have been doing this since we were 17 or 18 years old or even younger. We had a headstart over others who were also politically inclined.

Then one day, we bumped our heads and woke up from the stupor, although not at the same time. One by one, many of us simply grew weary of activism. We got tired of marching and shouting outdated slogans. We needed to make a living. We felt we had done our time, contributed to the cause, served our tours of duty.

The wake-up call came not only from within. There were also other developments in the national scene that dispersed the Left. The first Edsa People Power led to an opening up of democratic space and the restoration of the democratic exercise called elections. There was an opportunity for activists to make use of their political skills, and there was a need, a vacuum to be filled.

There are 300,000 elective positions in the country. Surely, there are candidates or organizations out there that would need a political operative or an organizer. And some of us soon realized that it is far easier to run an electoral campaign than it is to bring down a government or to win a revolution.

EVEN as competitive electoral politics were being restored, the Left was disintegrating into many splinter groups. The infighting within was so intense and so exhausting that many of us felt it was better to channel our energies to other uses.

We thought to ourselves, why render service to the revolution when we could put ourselves on the electoral job market and get a fair price for our services (at the minimum, enough for us to make a decent living)? Why not venture into elections, when even the Left itself these days has chosen the parliamentary route?

We former leftists are like Swiss knives. Because of our training, we can perform multiple functions: We can draft press releases, act as stage production managers, or rent-a-crowd shepherds. We can produce the visuals needed in a campaign or sortie. We know the best place to hang a poster or paint a slogan.

We have a lot of qualities that make us suited for an election campaign. There's our unique work ethic. We are quick to the draw, persistent, dedicated, and hardworking. Ex-activists possess that element of audacity. Those who were propagandists in their youth were also tacticians, their mischievous minds could conjure all kinds of scenarios, anticipating situations and plotting out options and contingencies. Activists also acquired organizational skills. It takes a lot of organizational savvy to mobilize a rally of 30,000 people, or to feed 50,000 Lakbayan marchers.

We were trained to have tit-for-tat, quick response to issues. We acquired and retained skills to analyze situations and to communicate. A good cadre has the capacity to see the big picture, describe it, and act on it. Beyond the electoral campaign, the field is littered with ex-leftists, student activists in college who have reinvented themselves as analysts in brokerage houses, media practitioners, bureaucrats, and policy handlers. Put us in mainstream politics, and we can show you more than a thing or two on how to run a campaign.

Take the "oust Estrada" campaign. That began with ex-leftists. The actions that eventually led to the removal of a president were small-scale, low-cost, but highly effective mobilizations. It was a mosquito movement that eventually grew and drew public attention. Such actions have a big impact, especially in this media- and image-driven world.

Most ex-activists, however, are probably "generalists." Few are specialists, or those with a certain level of technical expertise. The rest of us are probably best at being field operators who can take charge of, literally, anything under the sun-rallies, motorcades, house-to-house campaigns, and the like.

Ex-leftists have an edge in the sense that they represent a hybrid of conventional election campaigns and guerilla tactics. People who once dreamed of being crack urban partisans are now effective character assassins. Their "hits" bear telltale signs of an operation done by ex-activists. They can bring your reputation down through exposés and black propaganda.

Many ex-activists and guerilla fighters provide security services for VIPs. After all, they had hunted prey in their previous lives. For a political candidate, it pays to get security from people who can view the whole situation from the point of view of a hunter. But there are other ways that a person's proficiency with a gun can be employed. There have been disturbing reports, especially in the provinces, that ex-guerillas are selling themselves as guns for hire.

And then they can also be used in special operations. In the 1998 and 2001 elections, ex-activists in the employ of senatorial candidates tried to cure the bad showing of their principals in the early tabulated forms by going to the source of votes in the provinces, and they got in touch with ex-comrades who were also deep into that kind of operation. They can refer you to the right persons; arrange appointments with people that matter most. Remember that if we're talking of activists who were active in the 1970s, and they left the movement long ago and then embarked on careers in mainstream society, many of them have already climbed up the ladder in the natural progression of a career. They are now in positions of influence, holding important government posts.