Candidates for President in the 2010 elections in the Philippine will find it harder this time. I mean, harder than just presenting their lonesome selves, and waiting for the votes to come in. Voters will be be more demanding of their candidates, and dismissive of those who will offer not much more than their names.
For those who will market and promote Candidates, including PR managers, the following may be helpful.
1. Popularity still does count, but will not be enough. Easy recall and recognizability may push the Candidate up front, but that is just the beginning. Candidates will have to traverse a lot of ground before they get the vote.
2. A great number of voters are young, and many of them disdain popularity and lack of depth, and popularity and glibness, for they suspect here weakness of principles.
3. Issues are fine, but what issues are really important, and which ones will connect to the voter, and to which voter? How strongly will your Candidate "connect" with the issues? Often those who insist on "issues" themselves sidestep issues because they really would rather go on with it fast, depending on their high-recall names.
4. Spending a lot of money, or pretending that you have a lot of it to burn, can be counterproductive. Old and new voters get the impression that profligate candidates themselves believe that voters can be bought, and these are not be trusted.
5. Candidates are not products, but people. Candidates must be able to think, reason out, express and defend what they believe in and explain to the voters how will they preserve and enhance the republic, serve our people and help keep their freedom and win their prosperity.
6. Voters expect top-calibre Candidates to choose from, those with high intelligence, proven leadership, commitment to the public good, and willingness to sacrifice. The day of the buffoons, I fear, is over. Voters know that in spite of the setbacks that the country have had to go through, it is intact, and is in many ways better and stronger than it used to. And its next President had better keep it being that.
7. Candidates are for our people, but it would be nice if we had a President who can with vision, presence and accomplishments be speaking to the rest of the world as well, and gain more respect for our country.
Let us do away wit buffoons and types that we would wish we did not have anything to do about.
8. Voters will demand from Candidates respect and due consideration for their intelligence, and the fact that they, our Voters, work hard for what they believe will be best for their country.
9. Show us how you see our country and what you plan, with our help, to make of it. Be open, be communicative, and be truthful. If, in doing so, you blunder or feel you have made a fool of yourself, admit it, explain and go on. Voters have more intelligence and sophistication than you may credit them with.
10. Show us who you really are, because whether you do or don't we will see, anyway. If you do that, and you fail to make it, that wouldn't be so bad, for there are other ways of serving our country than being President.
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