by Luz Rimban
THERE ARE virtually no farms in Las Piñas, Parañaque, Quezon City and certainly not in Makati. Yet these overbuilt and densely-populated cities were among at least 100 congressional districts that, according to the Department of Agriculture (DA), needed P1.8 billion in farm inputs and implements in February 2004, just when the presidential campaign was kicking off.
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| Posted Wednesday, September 28th, 2005
The Campaign
The story of activists-turned-political consultants
Former communists are today's campaign operatives and political mechanics.
As told to Luz Rimban
JOSE Ma. Sison should cry at all the wasted talent. He could have won the revolution if the movement had stayed its course and kept its children from straying into the forbidden capitalist and reactionary world. (He shares a large part of the blame, too, of course, for steering a hard-line course and ousting — not to mention possibly ordering the elimination — of some of the best cadres from the party.) At any rate, these days, many of us who used to be part of the underground are all over the place. Some of us run telecommunications companies, public utilities, banks, and even the highest offices of government. Many form that segment of the middle class that supports decent candidates.
The Campaign
by George S. Caparas
IN A country as crazy about music as the Philippines, it is not surprising that even politics has a soundtrack. Long before showbiz and media personalities dominated Philippine political life, music was already part of it, from the revolutionary songs that boosted the morale of the indios revolting against the Spaniards, to the different anthems Filipinos were made to sing before they were finally able to belt out “Lupang Hinirang” in public.
The Campaign
by Ibarra C. Mateo
IT WAS a slow Saturday, and so a middle-level editor thought nothing of working on a press release handed over by a senior editor and turning it into a readable news item. It appeared in the paper the next day, and that should have been that. But then the three government officials who were quoted in the piece complained to the newspaper’s editors, saying the writer of the press release had not interviewed them at all. They also said that they had not authorized the issuance of such a press release under their names. An internal investigation conducted by the paper’s management later revealed that a shadowy political PR person had been the source of the fictitious story. Apparently, the aim was to cast the winning bidder of a government contract in a bad light.
by Sheila S. Coronel
EIGHTEEN years after the fall of Marcos, Congress is not becoming a more representative institution. In fact, today’s legislators are richer now than ever before. While poverty levels since 1986 have remained at roughly between 30 and 40 percent of the population, lawmakers have become wealthier.
The Campaign
by Yvonne T. Chua
SENATOR John Osmeña is certain he will win again in the May elections. The numbers say so, he crowed in an evening talk show, where he whipped out the results of a poll he had commissioned the survey outfit Social Weather Stations (SWS) to do last year.
by Yvonne T. Chua
WHEN the U.S. Democratic Party primary season opened in January, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry hardly looked like someone who could be the party’s candidate in the U.S. presidential election this November. Although already a fourth-term senator, Kerry was being outshone by Vermont governor Howard Dean, who the media had all but proclaimed the Democrats’ presidential bet.
The Campaign
by Luz Rimban
ADVERTISING guru Reli German tells the story of the time he was tapped to produce commercials and jingles for then candidate Ferdinand Marcos’s 1965 presidential bid. The campaign was more of a family venture with no less than Marcos’s wife Imelda herself directing the troops. She would drop by German’s office to look over campaign materials and listen to the jingles being prepared for her husband’s campaign. “It was more of Imelda that we were dealing with directly for the campaign in 1965,” German recalls.
