The US elections starts today and though Obama is leading McCain by only an average of 10% across all national poll surveys, a change of tide is slim and perhaps grim for those wishing it will happen.
Anyway, I’m not really blogging now to talk about the two candidates, I don’t know them. What interests me is the US elections, specifically, that it is only a two-party system.
A two-party system guarantees that a candidate will win a majority of the votes. One will always get numbers higher than 50% and the other lower than 50%. So whoever wins is sure that he has the support of the majority of the American nation.
But for the Philippines, it is altogether different. In the 2008 elections, if I can recall it accurately, GMA only got 37% of the votes. FPJ got 35%, and the other candidates sharing the remaining 28%. So by virtue of the numbers themselves, GMA won the game.
But if you would really think about it, out of the 100 voters, GMA did not really win the majority. She only won 37. SO whether or not she cheated her way and FPJ was supposed to get the 37 instead of her, that is now pointless. What the 37% really means is that the 63%, the REAL majority, wanted other candidates instead.
And so it is not really surprising that once in place and an agree-disagree survey is conducted, the president of the Philippines will always fall short of the thumbs up. It is not surprising that a majority will feel generally unsupportive and rebellious.
The multisectoral party system in the Philippines actually started in the 1987 constitution. It used to be a two party system, because as you might have learned from history, we were such an American puppet before, and we sort of just do what they were doing themselves.
But being a puppet in that aspect was not entirely bad. We had such great presidents from Quezon up until Cory. Cory won the clear majority against Marcos in the snap elections in 1986 because it was only a matter of choosing either the tyrant or the widow.
But see what happened after Cory – Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo. These administrations were wrought with so many controversies and the political turmoil was everything but good. And that was not because they were bad leaders. It was simply because not one of them really won the majority in the elections.
There is a clamor for chacha now, although not in the present term. The constitution is already 21 years old and it is, to say it bluntly, outdated and obviously not performing good. Should the constitution ever be changed, I’d go for a two-party system again.
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