Musings on Little History, 7/31-2017 1

Musings on Little History Mahar Mangahas

Topic for Kapihan sa SWS, August 9, 2017

(Note: My column “Social Climate” was in the Chronicle in 1988-1993 and Manila Standard in 1996-2002, before appearing in the Philippine Daily Inquirer starting 2007. But I had another column, called “Little History,” in Evening Paper, from February 1996 to May 1997, from which the two pieces below came.)

1. LITTLE VS. BIG HISTORY (Evening Paper, 2/25/1996)

Mahar Mangahas

This new column for the Evening Paper will be a venue for some facts, based on social surveys, naturally, which I hope could become part of the background materials for future writers of Little History.

Besides the customary Big History of the doings of the VIPs such as the presidents and potentates, the bishops and businessmen, or the generals and the glamorous people, there is a Little History too. The Little History is about the citizenry, as a whole, with no names attached.

Nameless though we citizens are, in this Little History, our characteristics are clearly recognizable. For example, we are half-and-half men and women (at least physically), though the precisionists say that the males have a tiny edge in numbers.

We have many first languages, and many second languages. Not to mention many more dialects, which are only subcategories of a language.

One of the special things about us Filipinos is that we are one of the most religious countries in the world. Practically all of us subscribe to some religion, and have very deep trust in our respective faiths. I intend to go into more details about this in future columns.

Interestingly, the moral attitudes of Filipino Catholics are much more similar to the attitudes of Filipino non-Catholics than to the attitudes of Catholics of other countries, such as Ireland or Italy or the United States. This implies that we should refer to our sense of morality as distinctly Filipino. Not as distinctly Catholic.

The Big History is concerned with major personalities. So the Big Historians, like a Teodoro Agoncillo, are on the look-out for biographies, personal communications, official documents and so forth.

Whereas the Little Historians, like a Rey Ileto, would be looking out for, among other things, surveys about the concerns, the joys, the aspirations, and the anxieties of the people. They would want to weave the people's attitudes and feelings into the larger stories of general social, economic and political progress.

Whereas much of the Big History is about aggregate economics, much of the Little History is about the quality of life and how it is distributed.

A tiny number of Filipinos are rich. A fair number are middle class, by cosmopolitan standards --- actually, such 'middle class' are already far above the middle of the distribution according to either income or wealth.

Most Filipinos, for now at least, are poor, if they may be allowed to define poverty in their own way. In the eyes of most of such poor in the entire country, this means not having as much as P5,000 per month, at present, for household expenses. This people's poverty-line used to be only P1,500 per month, at the time of the EDSA Revolution.

For people living in , however, escaping from poverty now means having a home budget of over P9,000 per month. Ten years ago, this used to be only P3,000.

Whereas much of the Big History is about the fortunes of individual politicians, much of the Little History is about what the those at the grass-roots think of politics. Of course, the Big and the Little Histories are interconnected.

We Filipinos enjoy politics. We have likes and dislikes for political personalities, but are very neutral about political parties in general. Only 5% identify themselves with a political party.

Nevertheless, the great majority say that they trust political parties -- but instead of trusting one particular party to the exclusion of the other parties, the average Filipino tends to trust several parties simultaneously. Thus, political turncoatism is not a serious turn-off to the voters.

Leaders with strong personalities tend to be appealing to the electorate. And yet the electorate rejects authoritarianism as a system.

For those who are committed to the principles of democracy, the Big History is only the story of the instruments of national development. Whereas the Little History is about the very purpose of such development.

2. EFFECTS OF ‘LITTLE’ ON ‘BIG’ HISTORY (Evening Paper, 3/2/1997)

Mahar Mangahas

When entitling this column last year, I said that Little History is a term for the happenings of the anonymous general public, in contrast to orthodox Big History, which is about specific VIPs like politicians, bishops, and generals, the heroes and beauties, the villains and uglies, and the whole assortment of name- droppables.

Now that social surveys, including opinion polls, based on scientific samples are being done regularly, there is material for writing Little History which didn’t exist a century ago. Recently I felt nicely complimented when Filipina historian Ruby Paredes, of the University of Wisconsin faculty, wrote by email her wish that there had been a survey to describe, for example, how the Manileños of 1898 felt when the American troops occupied .

Although surveys can describe, with a certain degree of accuracy, how people are going to vote -- especially if the election is only a few days away -- it’s still the voters, not the surveys, who put a candidate in office, and thereby qualify her or him to be a subject for Big History.

Surveys don’t influence how voters vote. (There’s research on that, based on surveys too, of course.) They can only predict what the election score will be, under certain givens, such as who the candidates might be.

A significant way whereby surveys, as a record of Little History, affect Big History is by encouraging further the political aspirants who are already strong, and, of course, by discouraging those discovered to be weak.

In the 1992 presidential election in particular, the top two contenders Fidel Ramos and Miriam Defensor-Santiago had to keep faith with their high standings in the pre-election surveys, on account of their relatively weak party organizations. FVR and Miriam were consistently ranked 1st and 2nd respectively in the SWS surveys during 1991 and early 1992; on this, see my book, The Philippine Social Climate, Anvil Publishing, 1994.

Sen. , for his part, was doing no better than 3rd, and usually only 4th, in the SWS surveys on the race to be President in 1992. The race to be Vice-President, however, was another matter -- in this contest Erap was way ahead, SWS informed his close advisers in a special briefing.

Based on our surveys, the only one with a chance to beat Erap for VP in 1992 was Miriam Santiago; but she was fixated on the Presidency. When already in office, Vice-President Estrada once asked me what I thought would have happened if he had teamed up with Miriam in the 1992 election. My guess was that whoever of the two of them ran for VP would probably win, but that whoever ran for President would find it hard to beat FVR.

A survey finding does not have to be flattering to a politician in order to be valuable. In 1991, Ranjit Shahani asked SWS for a survey on his prospects of becoming a Congressman in Pangasinan. After the survey result turned out to be very discouraging, he ran, successfully, for provincial vice-governor instead. (But in 1995 he did get to Congress.) Another politician who got a disheartening SWS survey result in 1991 was , whose original hope was to run for the next year. Eventually, he ran for Vice-Mayor, in ’s ticket, and won.

The 1991 Shahani and Atienza surveys are permanently archived, with all the other SWS surveys, in the SWS Survey Data Bank. They may be accessed by the public for further study since their embargo periods expired long ago. SWS clients know that their surveys may be kept confidential only for a limited period, specified in advance.

In the 1992-94 SWS surveys of cabinet performance, as rated by the public, the consistent ‘star’ was Health Secretary . Another popular cabinet member, whose survey ratings had improved considerably since his service in the Aquino administration, was Justice Secretary . Eventually, both of them were recruited by the President to run for Senator in the 1995 election, and both won handily.

Is it fair for the more popular to have more chance to obtain high office? Well, fair or unfair, that’s the way a democratic system works.