Money, media, and machine will determine the outcome of the 2004 presidential polls, but class and demography will also have an impact.

by Sheila S. Coronel

	Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Panfilo Lacson, and Raul Roco have their sights set on 2004.

EACH presidential election since the fall of Marcos has been different from the one before it. Each one therefore has taught Filipinos something new about the nature of their polity and spotlighted new issues and forces that have an impact on voting.

The first post-Edsa presidential election held in 1992 was a closely-fought race that shattered the orthodoxy that victory goes to the one with more money, a well-oiled party machinery, and overwhelming support from Congress. The bandwagon for Joseph Estrada in 1998, meanwhile, clearly demonstrated the populist strain in Philippine politics as well as the power of media and entertainment. Social class was a strong determinant of voting behavior in that election. The poor were solid for Erap and it was the first time in recent memory that the power of the masa vote so clearly and undeniably asserted itself.

For this issue of i, we interviewed key campaign operators of the three declared presidential candidates — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Panfilo Lacson, and Raul Roco. (When this article was written, movie star Fernando Poe Jr. had yet to declare his candidacy, and this is the reason why he is not included in this piece. — Ed's note) While the campaign teams had strong differences about the relative strengths of the various contenders, there was a surprising consensus in their analysis of the electorate and of the factors that could make or break a candidate in 2004.

All of them agree that next year’s polling will surely be different. To start with, this is the first time an incumbent president is running for reelection. They all concede Arroyo has an edge no previous candidate in a post-Marcos election has had. The resources of the administration are expected to be mobilized for her campaign and this will give her a built-in advantage over other contenders.

But the 2004 elections, various campaign managers agree, is the first one that will be fought largely in the arena of the mass media. The media, they all say, have never been as powerful as they are now. That goes especially for television, which has become a truly mass medium.

“The media landscape has changed dramatically,” says Ronaldo Puno, an election strategist who played a key role in the Ramos and Estrada campaigns and is now the head honcho of Arroyo’s campaign operations. “Radio is receding to the background, mainly it’s for people who are driving through the traffic, people with cars, and the jeepney drivers. It’s not (for) the very poor because they would rather watch TV than listen to the radio.”

The trend was already evident in the late 1980s, when TV sets were being sold in the hundreds of thousands, and programming and even language (from English to Tagalog) was adjusted to reach a mass audience. In 1995, 57 percent of all households had TV sets compared to less than a third in the late 1980s. By 2001, however, the figure had risen to 85 percent nationwide.

Ernesto Maceda, a grizzled campaign veteran of many elections since the 1960s, agrees on the primacy of the media in 2004. “The principal difference in this election,” he says, “is that it’s going to be more a media (especially electronic, radio-TV) campaign than a pumping-the-flesh campaign.” This trend was already evident in previous elections, of course, but it will be even more pronounced in next year’s polls.