Many of the opposition leaders had supported the call for the removal of Gloria M. Arroyo as well as previous impeachment complaints filed against her. That is now out of the question as they set their sights on the presidency.

This vacillation is quite understandable because the presidential aspirants are in the main inured with the traditional politics where patronage, money, and resources decide the outcome of elections. Their political career is dictated by narrow elite interests and their claim to serving public interest is just for soliciting votes. Thus, at this early stage they are jockeying for support by powerful patrons, economic oligarchs, local dynasties, vote-for-sale religious sects, generals, and even possibly big-time crime syndicates who have high stakes in the outcome of the elections. Who knows but a couple of them are secretly coveting for the blessings of Arroyo even if some commentators say that it would be a kiss of death.

Expect shifting coalitions, realignments, and party-switching to take place in the next several months. Some of the presidentiables currently aligned with the opposition will eventually coalesce with Arroyo’s party, Kampi, guaranteed by the use of government resources for the elections and possibly even by the secret endorsement of some Comelec officials.

And yet as the heat of the presidential derby is building up, the electoral machinery that is charged with ensuring fair elections remains clouded with suspicion, low credibility and incompetence. Allowing the Comelec as a superbody to supervise the 2010 elections without all allegations of complicity in previously rigged elections unresolved while major reforms being sought are unheeded will not make the next elections credible.

Meanwhile, the presidency, as a key political institution, has been greatly weakened not only by abuse of power and corruption but more so by growing public perceptions that whoever occupies it will not turn things for the better. Proof of it is that there have been two successful people’s revolts that toppled two presidents – Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986, and Estrada in 2001. A third president, Arroyo, has faced three impeachments in three years and a persistent clamor for her removal.

Still the presidency remains pivotal in intra-elite rivalry and is preserved as a key pillar of the political infrastructure of elite politics. Its executive powers define priority legislation, decide the country’s economic tracks, foreign relations, and national security policies. In recent years, the people have seen how these powers led to the worsening of poverty and unemployment, unprecedented corruption, attacks on human rights, and the deepening of armed intervention by the world’s superpower in the guise of counter-terrorism.

While the country toils in the search for a government that really serves the people’s collective interests, the people can look at the next presidential race as a process of enhancing their own empowerment. With the presidential acrobats rehearsing for the next presidential circus, the people can define the contours of the next election by being more assertive in setting the political and economic agenda upon which the aspirants should let known where they stand. Their electoral arms such as the Party-list system can be strengthened to make it more viable for legislative representation even as citizens’ pollwatch groups should likewise be preparing toward frustrating and weakening the various machineries of election manipulation. Moves to abolish the system of political dynasties can be brought outside Congress and into the public arena as part of the movement for people-first or new politics. Posted by (Bulatlat.com)

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