You Should Be with the Winner

Sunday, 05 September 2010 00:00

Written by Malou Tiquia

A number of my colleagues asked me after resigning from a presidential exploratory work where I was going or who I would join for the 2010 elections. I said we are not in a rush to join anyone simply because we look at it not just of being with the sure winner but being with a person we believe can do what’s needed for this country to move forward and for Filipinos to be better off 6 years after. It is a different ballgame when it comes to electing a president and running a presidential campaign.

Others may not share this but I do believe a political consultant has to be responsible first and foremost. You don’t support someone just because he/she is paying well or because he/she is a runaway winner.

Presidential campaign politics is different from running senatorial, congressional or local campaigns. The blueprint is the same but the strategies employed are unique to the candidate. In presidential campaigns there are bigger egos to deal with, they either undermine a strategy depending on who the author is or adopt it as theirs and come out as the intelligent strategist to ever think of such plan. Senior people speak of their previous experiences as if there is relevance to the present. In one instance, I heard someone saying that they have 49 years of experience running a campaign. Lo and behold their candidate lost miserably in May 2010.

In another, a self appointed campaign manager for a presidential candidate thought that campaigning is all about putting posters and that cracking the whip among “lazy” political officers is the surest way to victory. He even bragged that he was the reason for another presidential victory in the 90s. The candidate was nowhere in the top after E-day. Another team even had a temerity to say that they knew the formula to being No. 1 and questioned another political player’s role on a winning candidate even saying that they know their terrain so well. Their candidate tumbled like Humpty Dumpty.

Presidential campaign teams should also be cautious in dealing with a group known for practicing “divide and conquer” as an entry strategy into a campaign. This group has done the same trick twice over in 2004 and 2010. They offer their services to do propaganda, using details from opposition research. In both instances, they were supposed to be below the radar but alas, it was just a ploy to enter the team and later on reposition themselves as media operators intervening in both the communication and operation aspects. Later, their team leader ends up being campaign manager. When arrayed against them, a presidential candidate would follow this group altogether because the group comes for free. The candidate just gets to pay the placement fees in traditional media and this operator gets to earn from it. After a while, you sense you are no longer in the core because someone or a group is willing to draw first blood and engage in the bloody sport early in the ballgame.

Must a political consultant be always with a sure winner? The answer there depends on the principles you believe in. If it was just being with the winner, we will not learn a thing or two but you will surely be adding more sticks in your winning column. The thrill in handling political clients is the ability to make someone win coming from the far end. May not be easy and may not even win the war but battle scarred and tested makes one learn from it and brings wisdom.

When candidates are pushed to run for the presidency, the people who pushed him should serve their president and should not be the first to drop their leader like a hot potato in a first test of leadership. If you truly believe your leader, you would be willing to take a bullet for him/her; you would be willing to sink and swim with the leader; you should be able to tell your king he has no clothes. So what do you call those who turn their backs? Traitors to the cause? Opportunists? Power hungry? Political consultants should be responsible, we should not only push, we should also think of the country. Sigh.

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