THE CAMPAIGN

First-World Techniques, Third-World Setting

The X-Men: The Story of Activists-Turned-Political Consultants

With a Little Help from (U.S.) Friends

Campaigning, Filipino Style

Spinning the News

Campaigns on the High-Tech Road

Songs in the Key of Politics

PHOTO ESSAY

The Presidency as Image

ELECTION PERSPECTIVES

Elections are like Water

Between Tinsel and Trapo

The Enigma of the Popular Will

VOTER'S VOICE

First-time Voter

Regular Voter

Non-Voter

Hope and Elections in Payatas

THE LIGHTER SIDE

Making (Non)Sense of Politics

Election Lexicon

Quickie Quiz for the Politically Insane

FOR A long time, Quezon provided the template for the presidency. Then Magsaysay came along, going farther on the same road than Quezon ever did. Perhaps the temper of the times was partly responsible for that. When Magsaysay contested the presidency against Elpidio Quirino in 1953, the Philippine state was in deep crisis. The Huk rebellion was seething in Central Luzon and communists were literally at Manila's doorstep. The fraud-ridden elections in 1949, when it was said that "even the birds and the bees voted," further eroded faith in democratic government. Magsaysay had been a congressman and was Quirino's defense secretary. He was hardly poor, but he styled himself as the plain-speaking mechanic from Zambales who could "save democracy" and crafted an image of himself as "The Guy," the man of the people.

Magsaysay certainly knew how to be perceived as one. If Quezon went downstage and shook hands, Magsaysay went to the barrios, waded into paddy fields, forded rivers, crossed ditches to reach out — always with a pack of photographers. It also helped that unlike Quezon, Roxas, and Quirino, Magsaysay was not mestizo. He was brown-skinned and flat-nosed, but he was tall with Malay good looks. He was also younger than the others, more athletic (he loved to ride horses), more energetic. In other words, The Man could also be everyman.

Magsaysay won the hearts of the people and restored their confidence in government and elections by launching a populist campaign and using Tagalog rather than English, insisting on plain talk and common sense rather than high-flown rhetoric. He was the first to use a catchy campaign jingle using a modern tune — the mambo — that was translated into major Philippine languages and played over and over on the radio. No doubt his image making, with the help of the Col. Edward Lansdale and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was state of the art. But

The Man himself was genuine and was more than merely an American puppet. Long after his death in a plane crash in 1957, he would be remembered as one the best-loved Filipino presidents of all time.

Nearly all the presidents after Quezon and Magsaysay were improvisations on these two archetypes. Marcos, for one, admired Quezon and tried to project himself also as a strongman, using his supposedly outstanding World War II record to propagate the image of warrior (only 20 years later would his war medals be exposed as fake). Even the alleged assassination of Julio Nalundasan, his father's political rival in Ilocos Norte, added an element of machismo to Marcos's image, propagating the notion that he was not to be trifled with.

In 1965, the relatively young and dashing Marcos ran against the incumbent president Diosdado Macapagal. On the campaign stump with a young and dazzling wife and young children, Marcos easily evoked the image of the American idol, John F Kennedy, and also promised his own version of a Philippine Camelot in his inaugural speech: "This nation can be great again."

Marcos, like Quezon and Magsaysay, knew the importance of the media and of image. The help of the Lopezes,owners of a big TV network and a major newspaper, proved crucial, at least at the start. Marcos also hired U.S. campaign consultants to spruce up his image and even had a movie made about his mythic life. From the beginning he projected strength and invincibility. When he declared martial law in 1972 and inaugurated a New Society, the mythmaking in the controlled media reached new heights: He was Malakas (The Strong One) in the ancient Filipino legend of creation and Imelda was Maganda (The Beautiful One). Only later would they be known as The Conjugal Dictator.

Like Quezon and Magsaysay, Marcos cast himself (and also his wife) in the mold of Philippine archetypes. The images of the Marcos period all projected the primal potency of this president and the stellar beauty of his wife. For a long time, Filipinos were so taken in by this image mak- ing that they were so surprised that it crumbled so fast.

It took another archetype — that of the grieving mother, the Mater Dolorosa — to break the Marcos myth. Corazon Aquino was the widow of a man who had clearly been murdered by Marcos minions. She cast herself as the complete opposite of what Marcos was. In her simple yellow dress and rimmed eyeglasses, she told the story of her husband's homecoming and his sudden death. He was a martyr, she, the martyrs wife. Thus, the 1986 presidential campaign — which featured U.S. consultants on both sides — became in the public mind a morality play, a struggle between good and evil. How could the public not be riveted by the drama that was unfolding before their very eyes?

Aquino, the country's first woman president, introduced a new image of the presidency Her successors, searching for a template for their own presidencies, harked back to the past. Fidel V Ramos, the general and hero of Edsa, took to chomping cigars and folding his shirtsleeves as he did a reprise of the Pinoy strongman role: He was "Steady Eddie."

"Ramos shed off his military uniform, but not his military bearing," recalls Anthony Abaya, a cosmetics executive who was part of Ramos's 1992 presidential campaign. "He also retained his military discipline, so you saw him getting up at 4 a.m., which was a positive thing. He was known to be a workaholic, which eventually became the lasting image of his presidency"

His successor, Joseph Estrada did not need to search for an image. Erap had been making movies for 30 years prior to his presidency and had consistently played the same character all throughout. Erap was another Filipino archetype: He was pare, a friend one could rely on and have fun with, but who is also capable of heroic acts. Filipinos could relate to Erap much more than they could to say, Ramos, who seemed distant and serious, or Aquino, who was righteous and upper class.

Estrada also understood, much better than his two predecessors, that politics, like film is illusion. That was why he could be convincing in his public role as President of the Poor — Erap para sa mahirap — even while he was helping himself to multibillion-peso commissions from deals broke red by his cronies, building fabulous mansions for his mistresses, and betting millions in mahjongg parties with his friends. It helped that he was an extremely charming man who disarmed the most skeptical with his candor and self -deprecating humor. Thus even as some facets of the real Erap was revealed in the impeachment trial, his image as a man of the masses persists to this day.

"Erap was easy to sell because he had a ready-made image," says Aurelio German, a former advertising executive who has been involved in several presidential cam- paigns,including Estrada's in 1998 and Marcos's in 1965. "Even the clothes he wore and the way he walked — that swagger — were consistent with the image of a rugged cowboy. People could connect with him and saw him as a really loveable guy."