In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
Journal of Democracy 10.1 (1999) 126-140
On 11 May 1998, in the second set of general elections since
Philippine democracy was restored in 1986, 28 million voters went
to the polls to choose a president, a vice-president, 12 senators,
over 200 members of the House of Representatives, and more than
17,000 local officials. It would not be difficult to portray these
elections as something of a circus, and the Philippine and Western
media did not fail to capture their peculiar moments. Two
politicians serving life sentences campaigned for high office from
prison -- and won. Many professional actors and athletes with
little or no political experience ran for office. One successful
candidate for the Senate, a basketball star, promised anxious
followers that, if elected, he would not allow his senatorial
duties to interfere with his game. Another victorious senatorial
candidate took a starring role in a television situation comedy to
heighten his public profile.
The 11 candidates for president included Imelda Marcos, widow of
Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled the Philippines as a dictator from 1972
to 1986. Mrs. Marcos, who was convicted of corruption in 1993 but
has since been free on bail and engaged in an interminable appeals
process, offered the voters an especially enticing inducement. She
promised that, if elected, she would spend her late husband's money
-- an ill-gotten fortune that Mrs. Marcos has spent over a decade
denying she possesses -- on bolstering the nation's economy. In the
end, however, the presidential contest was won handily by Joseph
"Erap" Estrada, a former actor who had served as vice-president
under outgoing president Fidel Ramos.
Despite its less elevated moments, the campaign culminated in
the freest, fairest, and least violent election in Philippine
history, defying widespread expectations of extensive fraud and
bloodletting. Given the system of vote-counting, in which votes
from over 174,000 precincts are recorded and tallied by hand, ample
room for cheating exists. Dagdag-bawas ("add-subtract"), a
method popular among wealthy candidates that involves bribing
electoral commission workers engaged in tallying votes at the
provincial level as the results slowly make their way from the
local precincts to Manila, was expected to mar the 1998 election.
But the high correlation between the official vote count of the
Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and the counts of such reputable
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as the National Citizens'
Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), which carried out parallel
vote tabulations, and Social Weather Stations (SWS), which
conducted exit polling, indicates that fraud was not as extensive
as in past contests. Political violence also dropped to a historic
low, with the number of political murders falling substantially
below the level posted in the 1995 midterm elections. The
relatively successful conduct of the May 1998 vote owes much to the
vigilance of the media, NGOs such as NAMFREL and SWS, and groups of
concerned citizens engaged in poll-watching. It was also due to the
strong commitment of President Ramos to open and peaceful
balloting.
The Elections as a Turning Point
Voting patterns in 1998 represented a substantial (and
potentially momentous) departure from those of the past. The
Philippines is inhabited by some nine major geographically
concentrated ethno-linguistic groups (as well as numerous smaller
groupings), and candidates have traditionally crafted their
electoral alliances along explicitly ethnolinguistic lines.
Victorious presidential candidate Estrada, however, targeted the
lower classes nationwide. He vowed to narrow the yawning gap
between rich and poor. His campaign posters were emblazoned with a
memorable rhyme that encapsulated his campaign message perfectly:
"Erap para sa mahirap" ("Erap is for the poor"). Unlike his
main opponents, Estrada neither spoke English well nor possessed
any technocratic, legal, or military expertise. The "Robin Hood"
roles he played in his long career as a film star enhanced his
image as a friend of the poor. Estrada's strategy proved
devastatingly effective. He captured 40 percent in a field of 11
candidates (see Table on the following page). SWS exit polls
show that he received overwhelming support among the poor. Raul
Roco, the haughty self-styled technocrat who finished third with 14
percent, outpolled Estrada among the upper and middle classes.
Estrada won despite the opposition of influential...