MANILA // Elections in the Philippines have little to do with policy issues and everything to do with who you are or, to be more precise, which family you belong to. On Wednesday the national executive of the ruling party coalition Lakas-Kampi-Christian Muslim Democrats announced it had selected the defence secretary, Gilberto Eduardo Cojuangco Teodoro, as its candidate for next year's presidential election. The youthful looking 45-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer who has lingered at the bottom of national opinion polls will now run against his second cousin, Senator Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" Cojuangco Aquino III.
Mr Aquino, 49, announced his candidacy for the Liberal Party last week and is riding on the popularity of his father and opposition leader, also called Benigno who was murdered in 1983, and his mother, former president Corazon Aquino, who reluctantly became the standard bearer for the opposition in a people's revolution that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos in February 1986. Both candidates are from the Cojuangco family, one of the biggest and most powerful political clans in the country. They are nephews of the business tycoon Eduardo Cojuangco, founder of the Nationalist People's Coalition and head of San Miguel food and beverage empire.
Even Corazon Aquino, who died in August, found it difficult to distance herself from the family. One of her key policy issues was land reform but she managed to keep the family's 6,400-hectare sugar cane estate Hacienda Luisita in Central Luzon, out of the debate. "Politics in this country has nothing to do with policy issues but has everything to do with who you are and what family you are from," Edmund Tayao, a politics professor at Santo Tomas University in Manila, said. "Aquino stands for nothing and is riding on the shirt tale of his mother's and father's popularity. If his mother had not died I doubt he would be standing.
"A few columnists and a group of former, disgruntled Arroyo cabinet ministers have pushed him into running hoping that some of his mother's magic will rub off," he said. "Teodoro on the other hand is smarter but, like Aquino, has been pushed into running by a cabal of political opportunists within the coalition." The challenge facing both parties is how to make their candidates popular among the masses, especially Teodoro, who has a popularity rating of less than one per cent.
"Noynoy is a media creation. In the nine years he has served in the Senate and Congress he has done nothing," Bento Lim, political scientist at Ateneo de Manila University, said. "He compares the situation today with that which his mother faced in 1986 but you could hardly compare Arroyo with Marcos." Within the family the two men have mixed fortunes. Mr Teodoro was said to have been close to his uncle but they fell out some time ago while his opponent is from the Aquino side of the family, which split with the main clan during the latter part of the Marcos dictatorship.
Even so the two candidates will not have to go begging for the estimated 10 billion pesos (Dh768 million) it will cost to mount a bid for the presidency. Both men are rich and the campaign will not be short of tycoons wanting to invest in the candidate they see as being of the most benefit to their businesses. Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez, who heads the powerful Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines' public affairs unit, said "people should look at each candidate's record and not get carried away with emotions or by the bandwagon mentality".
While Mr Aquino has everything to gain from his parents' legacy, it is questionable whether the voters will see it that way. Victoria San Juan, in a letter to the Philippine Daily Inquirer this week, wrote, "I am sorry to say this, but Noynoy - despite being the son of a courageous father and saintly mother - has the image of a wimp. He is not distinguished by any solid achievement, or inspiring pronouncements, or outstanding ideas, or by any notable opposition to the Arroyo regime for its human rights abuses, incompetence and corruption."
Mr Teodoro, on the other hand, has to go into the election defending the record of an Arroyo administration riddled with corruption. "The issue is not Teodoro, it is President Arroyo and her record," former senate president Franklin Drilon said in an interview. The f ormer senator Ernesto Maceda said: "The fact he is the ruling party's candidate is a handicap." An opinion poll by the respected Social Weather Stations in August put the overall rating of the Arroyo administration at minus 11, an improvement from minus 19 in February. Her administration was rated minus 21 in fighting graft and corruption, and minus 21 in fighting hunger, the August poll also found.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae