Manolo Quezon is The Explainer Newsletter - Issue #4: Long View Day
My column, The Long View, for today took its cue from Monday's newsletter:
From a conversation close to 20 years ago with Dodong Nemenzo: internal migration changes, so that formerly Tagalog areas have become Ilocano (the Ilocos itself, because of migration abroad, has become “depopulated”), formerly Cebuano areas in Mindanao have become Ilonggo, yet there is a Cebuano enclave in Ilonggo areas; a priest in Cebu around the same time told me Cebu is 10% Moro, dating to the exodus of Moros from Mindanao during the 1970s.
From a local politician, a trend going on for three or four elections now: as the economy has expanded and more ways to move ahead open up, fewer and fewer people are interested in running for office. The politician said, in the past every party had multiple aspirants for every position; now, they’re hard-put to scrape up a slate; the result is formerly warring families/parties divide up positions among themselves. Another reason for this is, may be related to item 1: as old populations move away and new migrants take their place, the ties between the political families and the electorate weaken; the result is an increasingly mercenary electorate which has no ties to the candidates and no interest beyond being paid for their votes. This makes even the most local of local races extremely expensive, which pushes political families/parties to divide the positions rather than contest them, to bring down costs.
I decided to flesh these ideas out a bit more with data from some academic papers and media reports. Space limitations meant I wasn't able to include the portion from my conversation with Dodong Nemenzo (I think I first mentioned this in my blog back in 2009, see Notes for a prospective article on the emerging politics of a national identity, specifically, VII. In contention: Internal and External Migration):
The old territorial-linguistic identities are challenged by:
1. Migration abroad
2. Internal migration
Of these, the former much more studied than the latter; also, the former is far more in the public consciousness as a phenomenon than the second.
I. Impact of migration
A. internal
-Quezon: Ilocos/Bicol migration, exodus of Tagalog population
-Depopulation of Ilocos
-Inquire from Dodong Nemenzo:
*changes in linguistic map of Visayas: shifts in Cebuano/Ilonggo speaking areas.
*Cebu now 10% Muslim
*Mindanao: increase in Ilonggo-speaking vs. Cebuano-speaking areas
*ARMM: dispersion of Muslim groups to other areas of Cebu, Manila, Baguio, Pangasinan; dimunition of Bangsamoro image among Moros who fled violence and fellow Moro warlords
B. external, i.e. OFWs and permanent migrants
*depopulation accompanied by cultural/ethnic chauvinism or efforts at linguistic preservation
-Pangasinan language concerns of Popoy de Vera
-U. of Hawaii Ilocano language advocacy
-Observation of priests at U. of San Carlos Recoletos: Cebu has 1st generation of primary Tagalog speakers
C. Urban vs. Rural Divide
-Rigoberto Tiglao 1980s Marxist critique: country’s now fundamentally urban
-Yoly Ong: Urban centers/cultures, Luzon-Visayas-Mindanao: fundamentally similar in political opinion
-Expanded NCR: represents amalgamation of all ethnic groups, with large Visayan component particularly in Metro Manila itself (see Nemenzo comment that Visayan influence is best seen in changes to Filipino/Tagalog grammar in Metro Manila and hence, national media); ironically, this has triggered, as much as a national public opinion has been created, the political consolidation of provincial political leaders and their machines in 2004-2010.
Please click on the link below, to read my column in full. (Let me know if you'd find it more convenient for me to include my column in full in future newsletters).
The Long View for this week
Here is my column for this week. Please click on the link to read it in full.
An epidemic of clans | Inquirer Opinion — opinion.inquirer.net As the President, or his people, or both, seem compelled to put forward the idea that his presidency should be followed by that of his daughter, let’s take a brief look at the role clans will play in 2022.
At the end of my column, I argue that,
clans increasingly hard-pressed to maintain themselves in power, have little to offer presidential candidates because they lack real “command votes,” even in places they’re running unopposed.
However, at first blush, this item from a PCIJ Report on the 2019 Midterm Election, Data analysis of votes, voters, and winners, reveals otherwise:
Voter turnout rates were far lower or higher than the national average in some areas, and in a few others, seemingly incredible or irregular at nearly 100 to 178 percent.
Some cities and municipalities had greater, others lesser, voter turnout percentages. In 396 cities and municipalities, was was lower, and in 1,238 others, it was greater.
In one municipality in Lanao del Sur, Comelec placed the voter turnout at 178.4 percent – the town had 5,498 total registered voters but a voter turnout of 9,807 in May 2019. In other areas, the voter turnout reportedly came close to 100 percent.
But these are results in locations that may have other problems than the ones I cited in my article, that end up fostering candidates running unopposed: overkill of this sort suggests other conditions at work.
There are two maps I found interesting from the same PCIJ report, and I wish I'd included them in Monday's newsletter, but the also serve as an appetizer for a future Electoral Merry-Go-Round on parties. They illustrate the party affiliations of winning gubernatorial and mayoralty candidates in the 2019 Midterms, Here's the portion of the PCIJ report explaining the information on the maps:
The May 2019 elections established the formidable hold on local power of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan or PDP-Laban party of President Rodrigo R. Duterte. The Nacionalista Party (NP), Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), and National Unity Party (NUP) that are also allied with the PDP-Laban also bagged significant numbers of winning candidates for governor and mayor. The opposition Liberal Party and other smaller parties seem to have been shut out or had gone ghosting in May 2019.
In more than half or 41 of the nation’s 81 provinces, the winning candidates for governor ran under the PDP-Laban party. At least one governor in each of the regions of the country ran and won under the PDP-Laban banner in May 2019.
The National Unity Party (NUP) placed second in terms of number of winning candidates for governor. Nine other winning candidates are affiliated with NUP, followed by eight from with the Nacionalista Party (NP), and seven with the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC).
Of the 1,634 winning candidates for mayor, one in three or 605 (37 percent) ran under the PDP-LABAN party. A far second is the Nacionalista Party, which fielded 240 (14.7 percent) candidates for mayor who won. The Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) and National Unity Party (NUP) had 173 (10.6 percent) and 138 (8.4 percent) winning candidates for mayor.
Missing from the PCIJ report is context, in terms of previous mid-terms and changes in administration. The rise of Hugpong ng Pagbabago, more clearly under the influence of the President's daughter, for example, and the political glass ceiling it seems to have hit --it was less obviously succesful in national terms, leaving the established parties running the show, nationally-- and why that might be so.
Additional Readings Department
Reportage-by-Tweet; an interesting read on how the Competition Commission has weighed in against property developers who force their residents to use "accredited" suppliers or pay all sorts of unecessary fees.
Thread by @roycanivel_inq on Thread Reader App — threadreaderapp.com
THREAD: Camella Homes, founded by tycoon Manny Villar Jr., has made it nearly impossible for residents in at least 2 subdivisions in Cavite to subscribe to an internet service provider...
My column mentions two papers, by Ronnie Holmes and July Teehankee, respectively. Here they are in case you'd like to take a look at them.
The Dark Side of Electoralism: Opinion Polls and Voting in the 2016 Philippine Presidential Election - Ronald D. Holmes, 2016 — journals.sagepub.com Despite the limits of elections as a mechanism to secure accountability and ensure substantive representation, the 2016 elections drew the highest turnout across elections held since the political ...
The 2019 midterm elections in the Philippines: Party system pathologies and Duterte’s populist mobilization - Julio Cabral Teehankee, Yuko Kasuya, 2020 — journals.sagepub.com The May 13, 2019 midterm elections were generally seen as a referendum on the first three years of the presidency of Rodrigo R Duterte. The elections tested and consolidated the political strength ...
I wanted to mention this, but space limitations made me delete mention of it, but this newsletter is a good place to point it out, anyway. The trend towards increasing numbers of uncontested races has also been observed in Indonesia, and perhaps for strikingly parallel reasons.
The Rise of Uncontested Elections in Indonesia: Case Studies of Pati and Jayapura on JSTOR — www.jstor.org This article explains a new trend in Indonesian local politics: the rise of uncontested elections. We explore this trend by way of detailed examinations of two ...
When new(er) research ties with older theories: take a look at this extract from Mina Roces' work on the Lopez family, and a paper some years later, on "politician family networks."
MLQ3 on Tumblr! — Mina Roces on Malakas at Mahina — mlq3.tumblr.com Mina Roces on Malakas at Mahina A concept Filipino historian Mina Roces introduced in her book, Kinship Politics In Postwar Philippines: The Lopez Family 1946-2000 arose out of dissatisfaction with...
Politician Family Networks and Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from the Philippines on JSTOR — www.jstor.org
Moreover, we show that family networks exercise an effect independent of wealth, historical elite status, or previous electoral success.
#QOTD
"The decline of democracy toward populism may not be inevitable; but it has been inseparable from the decline of authority. ("Authority" derives from "autoritas," that is: authorship, moral social or legal position, dependent on the ability to speak clearly.)" --John Lucaks, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred
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From The Philippine Diary Project:
Consuelo Ortiga y Perez, a Spanish lady courted by Rizal, June 9, 1881
John E.T. Mislaps, Salvation Army missionary, June 9, 1899
Francis Burton Harrison, with Quezon in Cotabato and Davao, June 9, 1936
William P. Oliver, an American P.O.W. in Cabanatuan camp, June 9, 1942
Leocadio de Asis, writing in Tokyo, June 9, 1944
Leon Ma. Guerrero, writing in Tokyo, June 9, 1945