{"id":213482,"date":"2019-05-09T04:55:49","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T08:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=213482"},"modified":"2025-01-08T18:24:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T23:24:56","slug":"parallel-campaigning-presses-candidates-advocacy-strategist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/05\/09\/parallel-campaigning-presses-candidates-advocacy-strategist\/","title":{"rendered":"Parallel campaigning presses candidate\u2019s advocacy: strategist"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What started as an effort to promote the advocacy against drugs and corruption of then Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte of Davao City has now become a coordinated strategy called \u201cparallel campaigning\u201d to press for the advocacies of the candidates for Monday\u2019s mid-term election, a campaign strategist said. (PNA file File Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CEBU CITY<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 What started as an effort to promote the advocacy against drugs and corruption of then Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte of Davao City has now become a coordinated strategy called \u201cparallel campaigning\u201d to press for the advocacies of the candidates for Monday\u2019s mid-term election, a campaign strategist said.<\/p>\n

Edward \u201cEd\u201d Mendez, a former campaign volunteer strategist who helped Duterte campaign in Cebu, said parallel campaigning as a strategy is now gaining ground in assisting the existing campaign structure of senatorial candidates.<\/p>\n

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A parallel campaign group, Mendez said, is an \u201cumbrella organization of different organizations whose members who are mostly volunteers have shared aspirations, visions, and agenda to that of the candidates they are helping with\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause it is a volunteer group working laterally with the existing political machinery, the volunteers running the parallel campaign has to commit their own resources,\u201d said Mendez.<\/p>\n

Mendez said he is now working as head of the parallel campaign team that is helping the candidacy of former Philippine National Police chief Ronald \u201cBato\u201d dela Rosa.<\/p>\n

Although a lateral group, parallel campaigners can work even if it is not \u201caligned with the party\u2019s agenda\u201d, considering that what it anchors on is the agenda of the candidate himself.<\/p>\n

It means that Mendez\u2019s group\u2019s efforts are on top of the efforts of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban).<\/p>\n

Mendez recalled that in 2016, PDP-Laban consisted only a handful of members with little to no candidates carrying the banner of then Mayor Duterte.<\/p>\n

\u201cPDP-Laban was not a structured party then. Nobody supported the president.<\/p>\n

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It had a very few members at that time. So we see the need to organize the supporters regardless of what kind of organization they came from,\u201d he said, adding that their group had volunteers from organizations of lawyers, riders, youth, doctors, women, retirees, drivers, among others.<\/p>\n

Mendez, who also became provincial chairman and president of PDP-Laban in Cebu, also recalled how the supporters shelled out their own money to finance the activities relative to the parallel campaign for Duterte.<\/p>\n

Advocacies as \u2018uniting platform\u2019<\/p>\n

Mendez said volunteers in a parallel campaign can only work together if they have common views on certain issues of the society.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2016, we found federalism as a good platform that every one of us in the team agreed on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used the federalism agenda to organize different people from all walks of life who were supportive of Duterte\u2019s view about our country\u2019s government system,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

According to him, absence of motivation in a macro-perspective affects the set-up of the parallel campaigning.<\/p>\n

Issues about the proliferation of illegal drugs as well as corruption stories hounding the government were also the uniting factor of volunteers, he said.<\/p>\n

To highlight federalism, drugs, and corruption as major issues, Mendez\u2019s parallel campaign team rolled out different activities such as symposiums, fora, and town hall meetings in different areas in Cebu.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

A campaign that is personality-centered, he noted, is a difficult politics to parallel with.<\/p>\n

Challenges in parallel campaigning<\/p>\n

Mendez saw the selection process in choosing volunteers as among the challenges in parallel campaigning.<\/p>\n

He said that it is difficult to build hedges against \u201cinterest individuals\u201d whose own agenda is for their own \u201cself-vested interest\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, the team can always work with people of \u201cdifferent personalities but with the same vision\u201d.<\/p>\n

Social media as platform<\/p>\n

Mendez said social media has played an important role for a parallel organization\u2019s plan to move their advocacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial media is a good tool to pursue our advocacy because it has no boundary and it is free, collaborative and you can say what you want without restriction,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce the advocacy is formed and became viral in social media, usually the traditional media will take it as cue of an upcoming issue of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

He cited a current trend where traditional media \u201cspies” on the social media account of their sources to get a hint on what is going on in the political front.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the “sprouting” of influencers or bloggers in the social media who you will not find during the 2010 election, I think it has a bigger impact to the electorate in Monday\u2019s mid-term poll,” Mendez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs internet penetration increases in every household in our community, social media will have a bigger influence not only on election but in our daily life,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Survey as a tool<\/p>\n

According to Mendez, parallel campaigners look at surveys as a tool that can guide him to move a certain agenda.<\/p>\n

“Remember, traditional surveys are lacking with true basic paradigm, that is sampling, which is very small,” he said. “Use surveys to examine if the candidate\u2019s advocacy is aligned with the pulse of the people.”<\/p>\n

After-election activity<\/p>\n

Some of the organizations under the parallel campaign will morph into another advocacy-oriented group, Mendez noted.<\/p>\n

There were volunteers who joined the government, while others remain \u201clobbyists\u201d of pro-people agenda.<\/p>\n

In the case of Dela Rosa\u2019s campaign volunteers, Mendez said he is looking at internet connectivity as a major issue where volunteers may lobby for passage of related legislative measures if their candidate find a slot in the next Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CEBU CITY\u00a0\u2013 What started as an effort to promote the advocacy against drugs and corruption of then Mayor Rodrigo R. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":212286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle","mauthors-john-rey-saavedra","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213482"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281193,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213482\/revisions\/281193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}