Riding the cyber campaign wave highs and lows of promoting philippine candidates on the web

Chapter One
INTRODUCTION

I.

Political Campaigns and the Internet
The Philippines, considered the ‘showcase of democracy in Asia,’ (Crouch,

1985) is known for its vibrant and mostly turbulent political upheavals, habitually
marked in recent decades by ‘people power’ protests, military adventurism and
presidential impeachments. The country is also synonymous with mobile politics
(Teeling, 2004), after cell phone text messaging aided in the ouster of former
President Joseph Estrada in 2001.
One other intense political exercise in the country are elections, which have
figured prominently in Philippine political development since being introduced by
American colonizers in the 1900s (Coronel, 2004; Teehankee, 2006). Commentators
have since observed a kind of timelessness about the ‘highly-personalistic nature of
politics, as well as the rituals and rhetoric of political discourse from the early 1960s
until the period of martial rule in the 1970s up to the restoration of democracy in
1986’ (Timberman, 1991). In the late 1990s, politicians caught on to the new formula
of mixing information and entertainment that was instigated and perpetuated by
Filipino television networks, which had copied the American entertainment industry
(Abinales and Amoroso, 2005). During the same period, political actors and election
stakeholders began to embrace Internet technology in enlightening citizens on
upcoming elections and educating voters on the background of some aspirants to
public office via campaign websites (Pabico, 2004). The succeeding elections saw
more candidates using campaign websites to reach out to voters (Cuevas, 2004),
similar to what U.S. politicians had been doing since the mid 1990s (Gibson, Nixon
1

and Ward, 2003). Interestingly, some of the candidates who won in the recentlyconcluded mid-term elections last May 14, 2007, were those who launched individual
campaign websites. Their online practices can be said to reflect to some extent the socalled ‘Americanization’ of electoral campaigns (Schafferer, 2006).

As for the

highly-politicized Filipino electorate, the advent of cable and satellites, coupled with
the ‘increasing influence of communications technologies in the formation of political
opinion,’ was seen to change the manner in which they chose their leaders (Magno,
1994; Valdehuesa, 2005).
1.1

Scope
Given this interesting socio-cultural and political climate, this thesis

seeks to understand the impact of online campaigning on Philippines politics
by studying the web-campaigns of six senatorial candidates and the
electorate’s response to them. It will analyse official campaign websites and
not those produced by any organization other than the one controlled by the
candidate or his campaign or communication staff. This analysis will be
supplemented with interviews with the candidates themselves or their
representatives. It will then study the perceptions of the online audience
towards Web campaigns through focus group discussions with Filipino voters.
The detailed research questions to be addressed by this thesis will be
enunciated in Chapter 2.
1.2

Significance
Apart from the dearth of studies on this evolving subject matter that

merits a new and broader investigation, there is a need to understand the

unique adoption of Web campaigning by local candidates from the context of
certain political realities prevailing in the country. Philippine candidates, like
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their counterparts in many parts of the globe have tapped the Internet to
promote their candidacies, but they have done so in ways different from their
counterparts in the region and from the United States. While fund-raising and
network-building typically characterize U.S. campaign sites, Filipino
candidates in particular deliberately excluded this feature that encouraged
donations to their campaigns via the websites, citing real and legitimate
concerns.
Whereas, in the 2004 elections, it was also observed that candidates
did not fully harness the potential that the technology had to offer and that
Filipino candidates lacked the requisite skills and financial resources
(Mirandilla, 2004), this study will be significant as it will show that the
situation has changed to some degree. This study will attempt to show how
local candidate sites demonstrate the increasing knowledge and skills on the
part of candidates and their campaign staff in using the Web to reach out to
voters.
Online campaigning itself is still considered a new political tool in the
Philippines whereby candidates here can make their presence felt not just to
the online community in the country, but to overseas Filipinos who turn to the
Internet for developments back home. The Philippine context makes for a
compelling inquiry for a variety of reasons. While the level of Internet
adoption in the Philippines is quite low compared to some of its neighbors in
the region, it is projected to grow. A recent Nielsen study has also pointed to a
slight drop from the dependence on television in favor of the Internet for
information. This is aided by the proliferation of Internet cafes in urban areas
in some parts of the country. Furthermore, mobile phone penetration is high,

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and the potential for media convergence between the mobile phone and the
Internet makes this study more pertinent. On the other hand, Filipinos are said
to be techy-savvy and recognized worldwide as top users of sms or texting and
social networking sites on the Internet. The preoccupation with the Internet
could potentially benefit both candidates and voters, in that if done right, it
could level the playing field for political actors and contribute to greater voter
awareness about those aspiring to be future leaders and the elections in
general.
This thesis was able to address these issues because it examined
select candidate websites, complimented these with interviews with the
candidates themselves or their campaign staff, and last but not the least,
provided the perspective of the target audiences of these campaigns – of
Filipinos based in the country and abroad.
1.3

Goals
This thesis will therefore attempt to analyze the extent to which

Filipino candidates are using their websites in promoting themselves to the
Filipino online community based on political and web-based marketing
principles. The second goal of this paper is to understand the expectations
and concerns of the online audience towards this new campaign technique,
particularly on the potential of the campaign website to serve as a new forum
for deliberative exchange. Lastly, this thesis will attempt to determine the
extent to which the online efforts of Filipino candidates echo the marketing
practices of American candidates, and whether there are distinct features
unique to Philippine Web campaigns.

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1.4

Contribution
This thesis therefore hopes to make a modest contribution to the

growing literature on Internet studies in the Philippines and in Asia by
providing a deeper understanding of how online politics is practiced by
specific political actors, in the context of the country’s vibrant, complex and
democratic political environment, as well as from a political marketing
perspective. This thesis hopes to advance what some scholars assert, that the
practice of technology-driven information politics, which includes the
deployment of the Internet, occurs at varying degrees (Castells, 2004; Kluver
et al, 2007). In particular, this study presumes to expand the notion that the
level of adoption of online campaigns depends on the technological diffusion
and political culture prevailing in a country (Kluver et al, 2007). This study
asserts that more than technological skills and knowledge, political culture
weighs more heavily in the manner in which candidates here adopt online
campaigning, as it provides specific findings from the Philippine context on its
unique brand of politics that will help explain why politicians here use the
Internet the way they do.

It hopes to impart a picture of the state of online

affairs for a specific period to which scholars can return, in bridging studies of
different time frames. Candidates and campaign planners may also find this
work useful in crafting their online approach with marketing principles in

mind, and integrating it with their overall campaign strategy. Meanwhile, the
valuable information provided by focus group participants in the Philippines
and in Singapore will address the gap in the current literature, by establishing
what Filipino audiences make of high-tech campaigns.

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1.5

Structure of Thesis
The remaining section of this introductory chapter will provide

background on the various Web practices of political parties and candidates
from different parts of the globe. It will also feature a separate section on the
Philippines’ political environment and Internet diffusion in order to provide
background and history for understanding the manner in which online
campaigns are adopted by local politicians. Chapter Two will undertake a
review of the related literature on Web campaigns. Chapter Three will detail
the multi-method approach employed in this study in evaluating campaign
websites and in studying the perceptions of candidates as well as those of the
online audience. Chapter Four will deal with the findings and discussion from
the website evaluation, while Chapter Five will present the findings and
analysis of the audience feedback on online campaigns. Chapter Six, the final
empirical chapter, will discuss the findings on the global and local character of
Filipino Web campaigns. The thesis will conclude by discussing key findings
of the study, its contribution to the body of knowledge on online
electioneering, and present its forecast on the future of online campaigns in the
Philippines. It will also look at the limitations of the study as well suggest
new areas of research.

1.6

Background of the Political Internet from West to East
This section will first review the history of Web campaigning,

beginning in North America to Europe, and lastly in some parts of the AsiaPacific region. Gibson (2004) argued that political parties from different parts
of the world moved into cyberspace in the mid-1990s without having clearly-

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defined ideas about why the Internet would prove useful, or how they should
present themselves on it.
1.6.1 Campaigns in North America –
While the Internet was used on a very limited, experimental
basis by political organizations in the United States in the 1980s and
early 1990s, not until the mid 1990s did it become a common tool for
political communication and the management of political information
(Graber, Bimber, Bennett, Davis and Norris, 2004). Gibson (2004)
notes that although the Internet had been used in a limited capacity
during the U.S. presidential elections of 1992, it was the 1996 election
cycle that saw the start of the concerted cyber-campaign with the highprofile websites of Robert Dole and Bill Clinton. In 1998, meanwhile,
successful Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Jessie Ventura utilized
the Internet to mobilize young voters (Gibson 2004:97). Critics
observed that candidate websites were static and dull, with offline
content simply migrating to the online environment, often with little to
no editing (Gibson, 2004:96).

Other analysts examining sites from

this era described them as mostly “brochureware” or “virtual
billboards” (Foot and Schneider, 2006). Web campaigning was also
largely seen as a gimmick or, at best, an ancillary to “real”
campaigning. Powell and Cowart (2003) said that at first political
campaigns used websites as a sort of proof that they, as candidates,
were up to date with “it”, and were able to deal with the problems of
the 21st century. The same authors also claimed that with the
explosion of websites and the vast improvement in modern technology,
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cyberspace became more directly useful to political campaigns with its
virtual billboards that featured a wide range of information about
candidates, travel schedules and fund-raising activities. There are
those, however, who say that most political candidates avoid using the
Internet in ways likely to reach the wired generation and fail to tap its
networking capacities (Benett and Xenos, 2004). It was evident that
throughout the years, the political Internet emerged as a critical
component of U.S. campaign strategies (Howard, 2006).

By the year

2000, the Internet had become virtually ubiquitous in presidential
politics and was spreading rapidly among candidates and local parties
(Gibson, 2004). According to Gibson, Internet campaigning appeared
to have turned a corner in terms of its movement into mainstream
electioneering after 2002, with Howard Dean’s use of the Web for
quality cyber-electioneering. Here, Gibson notes, the Internet went
beyond narrow fund-raising ambitions towards ‘real world’ voter
mobilization efforts.

Meanwhile, Canada’s political parties have also been early
adopters of new information technologies because of the need to reach
across vast distances and because they have been seen as a
nationalizing instrument (Small, Taras and Danchuk, 2008). In their
examination of the 2004 and 2006 federal elections, Small, Taras and
Danchuk note that the major difference between U.S. and Canadian
campaigns is the length of the election campaign period. While
campaigns for party presidential nominations and senatorial contests
can last well over a year, Canada’s parliamentary system allows the
8


ruling party at the time of the election to decide the duration of the
campaign which can last from a minimum of thirty-six to a maximum
of fifty-six days. This explains why websites of parties in Canada can
go from full operation to reverting back to electronic brochures as soon
as the campaign period is over. Laws covering election spending, also
impacts on Web campaigning, such that fund-raising on party websites
is not as important as in U.S. campaigns. In summary, the authors note
that since the 2000 elections, party websites have evolved from
electronic versions of lawn signs, into multimedia platforms that have
been integrated into overall campaign strategies. In terms of
interactivity and responsiveness, however, all of the political parties
were wary in opening up their sites to full-blown debates, because their
objective was to package and control the party’s message rather than
engage in uncomfortable issues in the site.
1.6.2

Campaigns in Europe
In tracking the development of Web campaigning from a global

perspective, Gibson observed that cyber-campaigning became popular
in other national contexts from the mid to late 1990s. She noted that
British candidates used ICTs to communicate with voters, while parties
from Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands to Greece and
Portugal were seeing the importance of launching cyber campaigns.
Political parties in Western Europe have long held a presence in
cyberspace, given the high rates of usage among the electorate
(Carlson and Strandberg, 2005). In their study that sought to answer
whether the long-term high levels of Internet penetration in Finland
9


attracted and mobilized a new and varied strata of voters, Carlson and
Strandberg found an over-representation of younger voters aged 18-24,
males, the better-educated and those living in urban or semi-urban
places. They also discovered that few voters looked for electionrelated information and visited party or candidate websites, implying
that the Web is still not as important a source for political knowledge
as newspapers and television. From the standpoint of parties, Carlson
and Strandberg found that most sites resembled traditional brochures
rather than new and interactive campaign outlets. In Belgium and the
United Kingdom, the demographics of website visitors were also found
to be similar to those in Finland (Hooghe and Vissers, 2006; Ward,
Gibson and Lusoli, 2006). These findings suggest that site visitors are
almost the same in Western Europe, where they merely check the site
to gather electoral information rather than interact with the party
politicians or other voters, or play an active role in the campaign. The
cyber campaigns of other ‘wired’ nations in Western Europe such as
Denmark, Sweden and Norway ‘have also not been trailblazers in
campaigning online’ (Gibson, 2004).

In Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, party sites were
observed to have an overall high quality in spite of lower Internet
penetration levels than Southern Europe (March, 2003). March
explains that new parties in the former Communist countries are keen
to show their progressive credentials, thus explaining their proactive
stance toward the new digital technologies. Gibson (2004) notes that
for Southern Europe, the public’s low rate of Internet use in countries
10


such as Portugal, Greece, Italy and Spain contributes to greater
evenness in parties’ performance, since the incentives for the dominant
parties to channel significant resources towards Web development are
reduced. On a last note, Castells (2004) contends that technologydriven, informational politics in Europe is a new historical trend
shaping the entire world by successive waves, although under specific
historical conditions that introduce substantial variations in political
competition.
1.6.3

Campaigns in the Asia Pacific Region
Parties in Australia and New Zealand were also jumping on the

band wagon of online campaigning in 1998 and 1999, respectively,
while among non-English speaking democracies, Japan showed keen
interest in Web campaigning as early as 1995 (Gibson, 2004). Similar
to the quality of U.S. sites, Gibson notes that efforts have also attracted
their share of criticism for being too cautious and unimaginative with
too much content taken from the offline environment. She adds that
while political actors around the world did appear to be cognizant of
the importance of entering cyberspace, they were rather unclear about

what to do upon arrival. She, however, points out that it was not until
South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun turned to the Internet in early
2000 that cyber-campaigning was given a greater profile, transforming
the face of electoral campaigning in his country and confirming the
importance of a Web strategy for aspirants to political office across the
world. The 2002 Korean presidential election was described as
another ‘victory of the Internet’, in which creative website content and
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continuous email communication allowed Roh and his team to build up
his public profile and financial resources (Chung, 2003).
In Asia, many political parties went online between the mid to
late 1990s in the absence of regulation covering online campaigns, and
also because of the inability of some states to police online
communications (Gomez, 2005). According to Gomez, “the Internet
now provides all political parties in the region an additional medium
for communication, which has been adopted as part of the plethora of
communication tools that parties now use.” Political parties’ use of the
Internet in Asia also depends on the level of freedoms for political
expression in a said country (Gomez, 2005:5). In Singapore for
example, the extent to which the technology has been harnessed as a
democratizing tool has been limited ((Soon and Kluver, 2007). When
opposition parties here began to go online during election season,
Gomez noted that the Internet came under regulation in 2004 via the
Parliamentary (Election Advertising) Act.
In Indonesia, meanwhile, the Internet began moving from
campus cloisters to the communities in 1995. In the 1997 elections,
the Internet provided the three legal parties with an opportunity to test
the campaign value of having an Internet site (Hill, 2003). In quoting

Andoko (1997), Hill noted that the Internet was seen by some
commentators as a means of campaign communication which was not
regulated by the government, unlike radio, television and print media
for which the minister of information had a campaign protocol.
Similarly in Malaysia, opposition parties deployed the Internet much
12


more effectively in rallying supporters, and online news sites such as
Malaysiakini circumvented government regulation and publicized
information which was not readily available in the mainstream media
(Chin, 2003; Loo, 2003).
The following section will provide a more detailed account of
the political system in the Philippines, as well as the popular and media
culture that shapes how elections and campaigns are carried out here.
1.7

The Philippines Gets Connected
This section will review the history of the Internet and its use as a

political tool in the country. It will also examine the diffusion of the
technology and the profile of Internet users in the country. Such information
will provide the reader with a better grasp of the socio-political environment in
which cyber-campaigning in the Philippines is taking place.
1.7.1 Background and History
In the Philippines, Web campaigning might still be considered
a new way of reaching out to voters. While in the United States,
campaign websites have evolved from being just online brochures in
the mid-1990s to sophisticated mechanisms that allow interaction with
the electorate today, the first Internet connection was established in the

Philippines only in 1994 (Khan, 2006). Despite the low Internet
penetration in the country, the growth of Internet cafes has allowed
tech-savvy Filipinos access to this technology. Meantime, the Internet
also connects with millions of Filipinos overseas, who are able to
exercise their right to vote via the Overseas Absentee Voting law. In
the Philippines, political parties as well as private organizations started
13


utilizing the Internet as a means to enlighten voters on candidates who
were running in the 1998 presidential elections (Pabico, 2004). The
timeline below shows the history of the use of the Internet as a political
tool in the country.
At the height of the second People Power Revolution against
then President Estrada in 2001, the Artists for Social Action and
Response (or ASAR, which loosely translated means annoyed) wrote
and produced a music album that contained several witty and
defamatory musical parodies about Estrada, his mistresses and cronies.
The group’s recording of anti-Estrada music in MP3 format reached
the market of Internet enthusiasts at home and abroad (Maslog, 2004).
These, along with anti-Estrada jokes disseminated on the Web and on
mobile phones further eroded Estrada’s credibility (Maslog, 2004:76).
By 2001, there was a variety of sites which featured election-related
Figure 1. Historical timeline noting significant milestones in the use of the Internet
as a political tool in the Philippines

January 2001,
Anti – Estrada music
and jokes are
disseminated on mobile

phones & the Internet

March 1994,
PhNet establishes
first Internet
connection in
RP to the U.S.

1994

1998

Jan-May 1998,
Political parties,
socio-civic groups
& individuals tap
the Internet for the
’98 polls

Feb – May 2004,
More political
parties and
candidates vying
for national office
launch websites

2001

2004

2001,
Election-related
Sites fill the Web

14


information (Pabico, 2004). In the 2004 elections, all the presidential
aspirants launched their own official websites, while two of the four
candidates for vice president and fourteen out of fourty-eight senatorial
candidates created sites for that year’s elections (Mirandilla, 2004).
Studies revealed that most political parties and candidates did not
maximize the potential of the Internet as a tool for political
communication and that they merely used their websites as electronic
brochures (Mirandilla, 2004; Cuevas, 2004). During this time it was
also observed that political party websites served as alternative news
sites containing party leaders’ unedited press statements (Gomez,
2005). Examples of these sites include the website of the Liberal Party
of the Philippines and party-list groups ‘Akbayan’ and ‘Bayan Muna,’
which have representatives in the legislative branch of government.
1.7.2 Internet Infrastructure and User Profile
A brief history of the birth of the Internet in the country and the
technical infrastructure is provided by Rachel Khan (2006) in her book
‘Internet 101-the New Mass Medium for Filipinos’. The Internet was
first accessed in the country in 1993 by multinational corporations such
as Intel, Motorola and Texas Instruments to communicate with their
mother companies in the United States. Limited e-mail access to the
public was made available via the Philippine Long Distance Telephone
(PLDT) and Philcom Internet stations before an academic Internet
connection was established in 1994 via a 64Kbps connection to the

United States. The link was later expanded to more learning
institutions and other ‘preferred members’ to help augment the cost of
15


sustaining the international leased line. The exponential growth of the
Internet arrived with the passage of Republic Act 7925, or the 1995
Public Telecommunication Act of the Philippines. This allowed
telecommunication firms to offer ‘value-added services’ without a
congressional franchise and various Internet start-ups to establish their
own Internet service providers. Internet service continued to improve
in the following years with the interconnection of more ISPs and the
country’s connection to Japan’s Advanced Pacific Network backbone.
This backbone which consists of many ultra-high bandwidth
connections link together many different points around the world and
allows data to be carried over long distances
(). In 2004, President Arroyo created the
Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT)
to be the lead agency in Internet governance and in advancing IT
development in the country. In terms of industry regulation, the
government believes that Internet services and content providers
should practise self-regulation similar to the broadcast media. Other
government regulations concerning the Internet are for promoting
electronic commerce in the country.
According to the Internet and Telecoms in the Philippines
report (2006), there are almost 100 Internet service providers in the
country, the majority of them having connections through backbones
located in the United States. The country meanwhile has 264 valueadded service providers (VASPS) which offer Internet-related services
among others, according to the National Statistical and Coordination
16

Board. Of the 264 VASPs offering Internet-related services such as
access to the Internet (dial-up, leased line, broadband, cable, DSL,
satellite), Web hosting, Web page development and design, VoiceOver Internet Protocol (VOIP), electronic commerce, and the like, 224
(84.8%) are located in Metro Manila or the National Capital Region
(NCR), 26 (9.8%) are in the rest of Luzon, 9 (3.4%) are in the Visayas
and 5 (1.9%) are in Mindanao (NSCB, 2006).
Compared to the year 2006 when there were only 7,820,000
Internet users or less than 10 percent of the total population, there were
already 14 million Internet users as of April 2008, or 15.1% of the total
population estimated at more than 92 million (Internet World Stats).
ACNielsen’s “Activate” survey shows that the majority of Filipinos
between 13 and 30 years old access the Internet daily for at least an
hour after work or school (and usually before bedtime). The average
young urban Filipino is also actively using the Web, having two to
three email addresses from Yahoo!, Hotmail or email.com (Maslog,
2003). However, due its lower cost, mobile phones are more widely
used in the country by the so-called Generation Text, for the youth’s
propensity in using Short Message Service or texting in
communicating with one another. Apart from earning the title as the
texting-capital of the world, the Philippines cliche was also established
as the social networking capital of the world in a recent Universal
McCann study. According to the survey entitled ‘Power to the People
– Wave 3’, 83% of Filipinos who were Internet users were reported in
March 2008 to belong to a social network, with Friendster being the
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top choice, followed closely by MySpace, Facebook, Hi5 and

Multiply. The survey noted that social networking is a means to
connect people globally, especially for countries with high emigration
like the Philippines and Mexico. AC Nielsen Media Philippines
attributes the rise in Internet consumption to the growth in number of
Internet cafes in urban areas and the cheap cost of going online.
According to the earlier survey, Filipinos are also considered the top
photo uploaders and Web video viewers, and second to South Korea in
the number of blog readers and video uploaders (Kittelson, 2008).
In citing AC Nielsen’s Netscan survey in the last quarter of
2002, Khan (2006) found that over half of those with Internet access
belong to the upper and middle classes, which accounts for almost two
out of three users. The same survey shows that, interestingly, “foreign
(mostly U.S.) traffic makes up 90 percent of the consumers’
consumption” and that “connectivity to other Asia-Pacific countries is
a small fraction compared to the U.S. connection.”

Table 1. Statistical Data on the Philippines

% of Total Population

Source

Internet Penetration

15.1% (as of 2007)

ITU

Mobile Phone
Penetration

45% (as of 2006)

Dow Jones News
wires

Text Messaging

250 million SMS/day

National
Statistical and
Coordination
Board

18


Of the country’s Internet users, 3.1 million (about 70 percent)
are said to access the Internet using prepaid cards at Internet cafes.
These cafes, which provide affordable Internet connection, are the
products of government and private sector initiatives in bridging the
digital divide in the country (Khan, 2006). Despite the country’s low
personal computer (PC) penetration rate of less than 10% of the total
population, the Internet café has provided access to online gaming and
the Web to many Filipinos (Internet World Stats).
The report on Internet and Telecoms projected that while the
penetration rates in the Philippines are among the lowest in Asia, the
Internet is positioned for growth with its deregulated market, strong
government support for IT development and an increasingly Internetsavvy population. For one, the number of Internet users was expected

to hit 21 million in 2008 (IDC). In a joint study by Yahoo! And
Nielsen on Internet Habits of Filipinos, Internet use is growing even
outside Metro Manila, particularly in urban cities in Mindanao. In the
same study, it was revealed that social networking is the key online
activity, and that one in three Filipinos Internet users have a blog,
prompting Nielsen to declare that marketers and advertisers should reexamine their strategies in using the Internet to target consumers. The
study also noted a slight drop in television viewership, with more
Filipinos shifting to the Internet to acquire information from 98% in
2007 to 92 % in 2008. Those reading newspapers also decreased, from
19 % to 15% between 2007 and 2008 based on the study.

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1.8

Political Environment
The Philippines is among the few Southeast Asian nations that has had

a rich historical tradition in electoral politics (Teehankee, 2006). It is a story
of the Filipinos’ struggle to be part of a community of nations which believes
in the fundamental equality of human beings, in the individual’s freedom to
choose his leaders and to be chosen in turn, and his prerogative to be part of a
process that chooses which system of governance is best for him (Carlos and
Banlaoi, 1996). The EDSA or People Power Revolution of 1986 resulted in
the ouster for Marcos, the collapse of his dominant political party and the
installation of Aquino as president of the Philippines, whose revolutionary
government laid the foundation for the 1987 Philippine Constitution
(Tancangco, 1988). This constitution also paved the way for the emergence of
a competitive multi-party system, as a result of the effective dismantling of the

traditional political parties of the Marcos regime (Carlos and Banlaoi, 1996;
Tancangco, 1988). Under the 1987 Constitution, the pre-martial law
presidential form of government with the bicameral Congress was reestablished and national elections were synchronized with local elections
(Teehankee, 2006). The President and the Vice-President are separately
elected by a direct vote of the people through a simple plurality nationwide,
with both serving a term of six years. The Philippine Congress consists of the
Senate and House of Representatives, where half of the twenty-four senators
are nationally elected at large every six years through simple plurality. No
senator is allowed to serve more than two consecutive terms
(www.comelec.gov.ph).

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In the congressional elections that took place in 1987, the anti-Marcos
sentiment played a role in shaping and defining the outcome of political
alliances, and President Aquino’s personal endorsement of candidates was
deemed crucial. While this election marked the period of democratic
transition and reconstruction as pre-martial law political parties sought to reestablish their networks and new parties organized, most of these new
groupings were ad hoc and personality-based organizations (Teehankee,
2006). Moreover, these parties engaged in the same clientelistic and
parochial style of politics reminiscent of campaigns under the Marcos era
(Teehankee, 2006: 89). In quoting Gamalinda, the campaign thus was reduced
to a ‘poster and jingle war’ among the many candidates who were driven to
accomplish name-recall more than the advancement of issues (Carlos and
Banlaoi, 1996). In the first ever free and open presidential elections in 1992,
under the new constitution, no less than seven candidates vied for the top post
of the land, representing seven major political parties, such as the Nacionalista
Party, the Liberal Party, Marcos’ Kilusang Bagong Lipunan or KBL and the
Lakas-National Union of Christian Democrats (Carlos and Banlaoi, 1996:

148). The Lakas-NUCD emerged when then Defense Secretary Fidel V.
Ramos, after losing the nomination of his party, the Laban ng Demokratikong
Pilipino (LDP) or Struggle of Filipino Democrats, organized the Lakas EDSA
(Strength of EDSA) which later joined with the older National Union of
Christian Democrats-United Muslim Democrats of the Philippines
(Teehankee, 2006). It was only during this election that more stable political
parties contributed to the development of an emergent multi-party system
(Teehankee, 2006: 89). In the next round of synchronized elections in 1998,
21


there were eleven presidential candidates, with only two aspirants having the
backing of political parties with established political machinery – House
Speaker Jose de Venecia of the Lakas-NUCD-UMDP and Vice President
Joseph Estrada of the Laban ng Makabayang Masang Pilipino or LAMMP
(Struggle of the Nationalist Filipino Masses) (Teehankee, 2006: 92). The
2004 election for the presidency with its five presidential candidates was
unusual because, since the first time in 1986, the incumbent president was
running for office, due to the ascension into the presidency of then Vice
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo after Estrada’s ouster in 2001 (IPC, 2005).
For the first time, a candidate had all the advantages, from political machinery
to having access to state resources (IPC, 2005:7). Her rival, Fernando Poe Jr.,
however, was backed by an opposition-led coalition and had the advantage of
popularity, having been an action film celebrity like Estrada.
1.8.1

Political Culture
Political culture can be used to describe models explaining

behavior and public opinion (Howard, 2006). Kluver (2005) defined

political culture as the symbolic environment of political practice that
is shaped by historical experiences and philosophical and religious
traditions. This can also encompass cultural elements, such as the
assumptions, expectations and values regarding political activity (Foot
et al, 2003). Folk concepts, such as regarding leaders as parents, for
one, are seen to have an obvious bearing on perceptions of political
leadership (IPC, 2005). One study that explored the unique and
colorful aspects of Filipino political culture revealed that the poor
considered a leader “as provider and guide, and as one who thinks
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about the future, and desires the good of the children” (IPC, 2005: 98).
Their findings showed that the poor, who comprise the majority in the
country, consider elections legitimate exercises for selecting leaders
even though “the campaign period is seen as a time of extremes and
excesses” (IPC, 2005:102). Furthermore, the study revealed that their
vote is a thinking vote, one that is not swayed by candidate surveys
(IPC, 2005: 96).

In the manual “How to Win an Election,” Gonzales

(2006) wrote that for half of the country’s population who live in the
rural areas, where the totality of values, customs and traditions is
called folk culture, government can be distant and inscrutable like the
supreme deity of both the pre-colonial natives and the contemporary
adherents of folk religion. This alienation can be traced to the long
periods of colonialism under Spain and the United States in which a
central government was imposed by foreign invaders (Gonzales
2006:10). Even though the poor consider electoral participation “an

affirmation of patriotism and of being a Filipino,” this does not
necessarily indicate a strong sense of nationhood since there are other
civic duties besides voting. Gonzales further illuminated another
major cause of this weak sense of nationhood, which he attributes to
the historical connection between the Roman Catholic Church, the
country’s dominant religious institution, and the colonial powers.
Conservative pastors predominate in an institution that asserts the
apostolic authority of the bishops and the primacy of the Pope.
Gonzales said it remains unclear to what extent the hierarchical Church
is a genuine democratizing force in society, since there were no
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significant changes after it asserted that ‘people empowerment’ is
necessary – implying greater equality in both political and economic
matters, more democracy, and more participation. Specifically, the
Catholic Church has been known for its influence over its large
membership during elections, while the Iglesia Ni Cristo, an
independent Christian religious organization in the Philippines, has
long been associated with bloc voting (Rebullida, 2006). This bloc,
which has around 1.5 million members, according to pollster Felipe
Miranda, is a ‘strategic swing vote, especially in multi-party electoral
contests for the Senate’ (Mangahas and Olarte, 2002).
The cultural tendency of the masses to seek mediators, patrons,
and parent-like authority figures is understood better by traditional
politicians and members of political dynasties than by reform-minded
citizens out to challenge them (Gonzales 2006:16). According to
veteran poll strategist Perry Callanta, most voters nowadays give more
weight to the ability of candidates to address their personal needs, than
to candidates’ platform of government. From the researcher’s personal

experience of covering electoral campaigns as a political reporter,
candidates are also known to attend to a variety of social obligations,
such as visiting funeral wakes, sponsoring weddings and baptisms and
participating in fiestas and other local celebrations where they are
expected to donate prizes. “Wine, women, and song,” or even cash,
were meanwhile anticipated by those who expected to be wooed for
their votes during the Marcos era (Hofilena, 2006). This practice,
however, is still quite commonplace especially in rural areas.
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Citing Cruz, Hofilena (2006) noted that in extreme cases, some
candidates engage in mudslinging and going as far as eliminating
opponents through violent means, with political rivalries resulting in
casualties in both rural and urban parts of the country. Meanwhile, the
so-called 3 Gs of winning elections -- guns, goons and gold -- still
persist in some parts of the country (Callahan, 2000).
1.8.2 Media Environment
Apart from political culture, the media too play an active role
that shapes and gets influenced in turn by the campaign. The mass
media’s manner of coverage has contributed greatly to the image of the
election campaign as a ‘cockfight, horserace or boxing match,” where
the coverage focuses on the personality traits of the candidates, their
sensational statements against each other, their perceived standings,
and the trends in the race or match based on the opinions of pundits
and formal and informal surveys (Coronel, 2004). The
commercialization of the media, which makes it imperative for
newspapers and broadcast stations alike to make a profit or to rate
well, is one reason for the inadequate media coverage, where
insufficient attention is given to the platforms of the candidates and

their positions on social issues (Coronel, 2004:58). This can be
illuminated by the observation that the media tend to reflect the class
interests of their owners, advertisers and readers (McCargo, 2003).
For the rural poor, however, it is not the media nor the church who are
considered influential, but the family and the political party.
Furthermore, both urban and rural poor are aware that the media
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