Debates aren’t important

EDITORIAL

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02/09/2010

Public debates being held among presidential candidates in this country are useless and even more so if a debate is being sponsored by a newspaper that moreover has, as its panelists, its columnists. The same goes for television networks and their biases.

The reasons are varied, but valid.

For one, there are 10 presidential candidates that are being asked to participate in the debates, which number is fairly unwieldy, especially since it is more or less known that too many of these candidates have little or no chance at all of bagging the presidency.

In truth, the previous debates are hardly debates in a strict sense, serving more as a forum for the presidential candidates to inform the audience — either students or the so-called elite civil society groups — of their programs and plans, most of which — if not all of these — are ground on motherhood statements.

After all these so-called debates, just what have the electorate learned from each candidate’s plans and programs? More to the point, does anyone truly believe all those claims and promises being made by the presidential bets during these forums?

What these forums are turning out to be is yet another platform for some candidates to be either written about, or seen on television, with other bets turning their appearances at the debates for propaganda purposes or chance to hit out at other candidates.

Yet even when used as propaganda, do these forums get the electorate’s votes, even when one or two contenders do well? And worse, why do these forums allow the audience, who form part of their cheering squad, be made to jeer at rival candidates?

It is still best for candidates to go on a campaign trail and have direct contact with the people, thereby gauging their political strength and weaknesses. It won’t be the debate audience that will make or break a candidate on account of his having done well in a debate, or stumbled in the same debates.

For another, just what substance can be had in such forums where there are 10 presidential candidates given a time frame of one minute to respond to the questions posed by whoever has been assigned to ask questions to the presidential candidates?

If there were only two candidates, one from the opposition, and another from the administration, then perhaps a debate in this country would fly, and more substance in their arguments could be had. But 10, or even 8?

In the case of a newspaper or a television station organizing the debate, even this is a bad idea.

Whether or not these media outfits admit it, the general public sees them as biased, and their record does show this bias against certain candidates, and bias in favor of their preferred candidates.

To cite an example: In a forum where an ABS-CBN anchor was made the moderator or the emcee, he was judged as having been guilty of editorializing, and worse even insisted on just a yes or no answer, as though he were a lawyer in a courtroom, insisting on a yes or no answer. In a court of law, even if the witness is limited to a yes or no answer, either lawyer can get the witness to explain his answer, in a cross or recross examination.

In the same fashion, a newspaper that sponsored yesterday’s debate and had its columnists serve as panelists, won’t create the kind of public impact that the newspaper appears to be believe it will. Its bias has been shown all throughout — whether in the past, or the present.

What should have been a better format, if a media forum was desired, would be one that had panelists, chosen randomly, from various media establishments to ask the questions of the presidential candidates.

Even in the US presidential debates, it is never just one newspaper or TV station’s panelists that are invited to ask the questions to the candidates.

Still, with 10 presidential candidates, this could prove to be yet another useless forum, precisely because there are just too many bets.

It was claimed — and it is still being claimed — by a survey that presidential debates in this country have assumed an importance to the public, yet the numbers in the presidential surveys do not reflect this claim at all.

But there will, no doubt, still be more debates formed by various sectors, just as there would be more and more claims that these debates make or break the presidential bets.

The claims can come, but it will be shown soon enough, that these debates don’t.

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