Getting to know the Senate bets

LACKS THE CRACKLE AND CANDOR OF POLITICAL PLAIN TALK – Next week, February 12 to be precise, senatorial candidates of the leading contending parties – the Liberal Party (LP) or Team PNoy and United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) or Tatak Binay and including the independent bets make their most overt political pitch yet of the 2013 midterm electoral campaign. So at the start of the campaign every team’s crusade will boost its ranks of volunteers and surrogate campaigners. Then they’ll begin buying TV and radio airtime and newspaper space ads that political advisers and strategists say will accentuate the candidates and start out positive. “They will be unmistakably hitting and pushing hard the political accelerator,” notes a keen political observer.
Though each team doesn’t plan to mention their competition by name, surely they will start drawing clear distinctions between what some political analysts call “different visions of government,” but assorted kinds of candidates. Voters have reasons to know more about the senatorial pretenders because during the pre-campaign period and during TV political talk shows the vigilant electorate already noticed that many of the aspirants are not particularly sharp and witty contenders. Moreover, the dominant parties LP and UNA “re-enlist” some undesirable and thick-faced old guards as clearly exposed in their annoying and nauseating TV infomercials.
Much will revolve around choices and decisions to be made at the polling precincts by the electorate. Which is why the real energy of the voters will be spend proving and scrutinizing that many senatorial candidates aren’t solid or strong that they are, in fact, decadent and unreliable. Some are probably considered slick speakers but lacks the sizzle and candidness of political plain talk. It would come as no surprise that most if not all will give the same speeches – platitude for platitude, every time during the campaign sorties. Why, the voters might ask, would candidates say something so innocuous? Because they have defined themselves as either Mr. Public Service or Servant of the People therefore it implies they are fit for the senatorial posts.
This would seem a matter of interest for political analysts and strategists, far more important than whether LP or UNA candidates or the independents are better positioned to occupy Senate seats. In this case, it may be the most important question of the campaign. Ask voters why they like LP or UNA candidates and more often than not perhaps you get a dime-store type of answer: “The LP can match UNA on social services, economic and infrastructure development or UNA can win against LP on neglected issues that have been the subject of popular concern such as rising crime, reform of the police and cronyism.” But these are forms of pragmatism I suppose. And it’s an accepted fact in politics that the LP is desperate to beat UNA or the other way around in the senatorial race.
It’s not even campaign period yet and the senatorial pretenders are stealthily campaigning at a pace you don’t normally see until after February 12. It is clear these guys are not only pros, but they’re also “silent operators” and they know what they are doing – politically, sighed a thoughtful observer. The political pre-campaign stage of both LP and UNA, in the guise of information drive through deceptive TV commercials had been on their toes too long. They came out too early but their respective campaign planners and strategists believe that candidates who engage early will win the race. By embarking on a fair and clean campaign, senatorial bets of LP and UNA should be able to improve the voters’ perception of their parties – especially among reluctant and doubtful constituents.
The objective is to ensure voters they would elect upright and desirable members of the Senate and believe their choices should be responsible to the people and committed to achieving the aims of good governance while they are in power. But there may be another more sensitive reason that voters are restraining themselves. The choice of electing a candidate may be a matter of character, not substance or perhaps choosing one who is not blunt to playing tough, not particularly inspiring or compelling, but he or she will be a very tough one. And remember toughness is one of those intangibles that political pundits – amateur or professional, find exceedingly difficult to judge.