[Newsstand] To win, Leni Robredo needs 22 million votes
Leni presidency: Three possible scenarios
Land of promise
What we have here is a trifecta of opposition analysts, two of whom are the opinion that Leni Robredo will win the Presidency on election day. A third, MLQ3, has been waffling from being an optimist to being a realist, depending on his mood swings. He is worst than a woman going through menopause in this respect.
Johny Nery of cRappler believes Len-Len Rose needs 22M votes to win. How did he come to this conclusion? Simple enough. He based it on the current count of registered voters and applied the voting pattern in 2016 when she ran for Vice-President and “won.” Neat right? Nery believes that it will become a plurality race by May where Boy Pangako Isko will make it a three-way race between Marcos, Robredo and Domagoso.
In the case of the Ilokanong-Iranian Heydarian, he offers three scenarios of a Robredo Presidency on the same premise that she will win on May 9. I would assume that Nery and Heydarian’s columns were written ahead of the “release” of the latest Laylo survey yesterday, while MLQ3’s factored that in time for his column today.
Heydarian is already speaking of post-election scenarios for Robredo.
Dear reader, given the limited space in a single column, let me provide a preliminary analysis of the three more likely scenarios to consider. First is the “minimalist” scenario, whereby Leni pulls off a huge upset, yet the margins remain razor-thin and, similar to 2016, the losing party systematically and effectively questions the mandate of the victor
Facing an unfriendly legislature packed with illiberal figures and traditional politicians, and a deeply polarized society, Leni might struggle to press ahead with good governance initiatives. She might even face impeachment trials by partisans of the ancien régime or, as in our two former female presidents, even coup attempts by reactionary elements.
Under the second scenario, Leni wins with statistically significant margins, thanks to en masse defection within the ranks and soft-support base of the current frontrunner, especially in “swing provinces” in Mindanao and other vote-rich areas of the country
The final scenario is a “maximalist” Leni presidency, whereby not only is her margin of victory significant, but also the outpouring of support from a determined and coherent social movement as well as from international partners, including flagship democracies.
In the meantime, there is John Nery with his path to victory for Robredo using the very simple assumption that the 2022 election is the same as 2016. Simply not true.
After the initial shock of unprecedented majority ratings in election preference surveys for Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the presidential race will revert to form; the winning candidate will end up, more or less, with a 40-percent mandate, just like Erap Estrada, Gloria Arroyo, Noynoy Aquino, and Rody Duterte. For the purpose of discovering a path to victory for Robredo, I will assume that she will need to win at least 41 percent of the vote; in this scenario, multiple factors, including a surge in last-minute votes for Isko Moreno, will help drag Marcos Junior’s support down to 40 percent.
I will also assume that, with a few adjustments, Robredo will follow more or less the same trail to victory she blazed in 2016. This means winning the same nine regions she won, by about the same margins, and then holding her own in other regions. (She won a 10th, the Negros Island Region, but it has since been re-assimilated into Regions VI and VII).
But it seems clear to me: Faced with difficult choices about areas to visit in the last several weeks of the campaign, Robredo should decide, more often than not, in favor of Calabarzon, NCR, and Central Luzon: That’s where the proverbial needle has most room to move.
Meanwhile, MLQ3 seems resigned to the probability that Marcos will win by a majority; more than the 42% of the vote that made Noynoy Aquino President in 2010. What most people do not notice about this election is how Aquino beat Erap coming on the heels of how GMA “won” in 2004 and how unpopular she was throughout her nine years in power, all of which was their making. You have to wonder about the 5M vote lead Aquino had over Erap, who came in second, despite not having the usual funding support from his regular donors and the backing of the INC.
From Earl Parreño’s interesting biography of Rodrigo Duterte, we know that Vicente Duterte, the President’s father, was an ally and political protégé of Sen. Alejandro Almendras and President Ferdinand E. Marcos; that at a certain point, both Almendras and Marcos turned against Duterte, who’d embarked on the path—including becoming the Secretary of General Services—previously carved out by Almendras; but that, when the elder Duterte defied Marcos and insisted on running for congressman, Marcos supported Duterte’s rival while Almendras, supportive in public, actually opposed Duterte in private; so that three months after his defeat, the elder Duterte died, his son was convinced, of a broken heart. Soledad Duterte exacted her revenge on Ferdinand Marcos by supporting Cory Aquino, only to reveal her authentic political colors when she called for Cory’s resignation in 1990 and for Doy Laurel to take over. When the Aquino administration ran an official candidate against Rodrigo Duterte, he had no compunction about approaching the still-influential Alejandro Almendras to seek, and obtain, his political support for the mayoralty; in a similar manner, he sought, and obtained, the support of the Marcoses for his presidential bid in 2016. He paid his political debt by authorizing a state funeral at the Libingan ng mga Bayani for the late dictator. For a time, it seemed the President, miffed his daughter had decided to slide down to veep, was toying with the idea of somehow being a spoiler for Marcos Jr. Now, it seems, the New Society of Marcos and the Newer Society of Duterte have reconciled again. In what is likely the closing political act of his presidency, the President is ending his political career as he began it: by setting aside his feelings out of a pragmatic quest for success.
While the above may be true, the fact that the President met with Marcos before the announcement of the PDP-Laban endorsement points to Duterte giving Marcos his blessin as his sucessor. It might even be an equal partnership between BBM and Daughterte or even a collective one with GMA in the picture since she was largely responsible for making the Marcos-Duterte tandem a reality by stepping in when the rift between father and daugher became tenuous.
These three opposition “stalwarts” definitely do not have their ears on the ground. It also makes you wonder about the campaign team led by Bam Aquino. Are they really that deaf that they still have not come to their senses about voter sentiment against Robredo? It is not only about Robredo in particular, but the opposition in general.
How can Robredo promise unity in the event she wins when it is there for all to see how she fomented disunity by being the number one critic of the government she was a part of? She is not only Vice-President to those who voted for her but also those who voted for Duterte as President.
With forty days to go before election day, the opposition will supposedly undertake a house-to-house campaign to convince voters to switch to Robredo. This is a tall order given even if they manage to convince 1% of the registered voters on a daily basis, it would still fall short given the latest survey showing Marcos’ voter preference at 61% across the board.
What the opposition needs is a miracle. Unfortunately San Andres Bautista is stuck in San Francisco and even if he could come home, he is not the Comelec Chairman anymore. But you can’t count the opposition out since their very survival is at stake. Thus there is the split ticket strategy in select LGUs with RoSa and IsSa. This is meant to make it appear that Sara is dumping BBM when that is not the case. This is meant to confuse voters in the hope they will consider making the switch.
If we really want to send the message and make sure the opposition gets it, it has to be on the same level as what the Americans did against the Japanese. We have to bomb back the opposition to the Stone Age and this means giving a bad beating at the ballot box on May 9.
Ibaon na natin sila sa hukay.
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