The ideal situation in any election is that two or more candidates fight for a seat, and they earn the votes through the merit of their platform, their track record, and their stand on issues.
In many areas in next Monday’s balloting, however, many candidates are running unopposed, or without any challengers to the throne. With no rival to worry about, it is possible that these candidates have been using their spare time to campaign for local party mates and their party’s national standard bearer and senatorial bets.
PCIJ curated data from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on the candidates who are more than likely to be occupants of local positions in the next three years, simply because no one is running against them in the upcoming polls.
A total of 802 candidates for local positions – from provincial governor to municipal or city councilors – are running unopposed for the May 9, 2016 elections.
Of this number, 215 are vying to be city or municipal mayor and 249, to be city or municipal vice mayor. By many accounts, they are the not-so-secret weapons of national candidates and political parties eager to snare as much as 6.8 million votes altogether clustered in their localities.
Interestingly, 364 or 45 percent of the 802 names on the Comelec’s list of unopposed candidates are affiliated with the administration Liberal Party (LP), based on their Certificates of Candidacy (COC).
Another 101 of the unchallenged candidates, meanwhile, are from the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), 92 from the National Unity Party (NUP), 70 from the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), 68 from the Nacionalista Party, 62 are independent, and 45 from other parties.
Quid pro quo?
Of course, the willingness of local leaders to deliver votes for particular national candidates could turn into a simple quid pro quo equation. It may be dependent on the ability of the parties to grant what the unopposed politicos want in return. As Center for Local and Regional Governance (CLRG) Director Erwin Alampay points out, it is “not automatic” that unopposed local bets will actually deliver votes for their party’s national candidates.
“They might want to ask for machinery support or campaign donations,” he says, “so that they can conduct proper local campaigns for [national candidates] and their local slates.”
The number of registered voters where unopposed local candidates hold sway, however, may convince national candidates and their parties to do whatever they can to please the local bosses. As it is, the 215 cities and towns where the mayoralty race has just one candidate have a total of 5,915,756 registered voters. That’s more than 10 percent of the total number nationwide.
A bulk of the unopposed tally in fact can be found at the municipal/city level. Of the total 802 candidates without rivals, 194 are running for municipal mayor, 21 for city mayor, 226 for municipal vice mayor, and 23 for city vice-mayor. More than 30 cities and municipalities also have the same or fewer councilor candidates than there are seats to be filled, resulting in 250 candidates for councilor running unopposed.
“It is always good to have opposing voices in the local leadership, and that strives if candidates are from different parties,” says Alampay. “But in the case of unopposed slates, alternative voices may be shut off in the discussion of the local council.”
This investigative report was originally published on the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism website. The read the full article, please click here.
