GMA's truth, Lapid's magic bullet & Erap's English

MANILA, Philippines - I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.    — Charles de Gaulle

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.      — Winston Churchill

Philippine politics is often stranger than fiction or even show business. We, the citizenry, should be eternally vigilant, wide awake, and committed to safeguarding the 2010 polls!

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s ghostwriters either have a ghastly sense of humor or are simply not abreast of current events in the last few years, for how can they explain their facetious line in GMA’s Easter Sunday message, which goes like this: “In our lives as Christians, we, too, must prove our love for the truth in His Life and His teachings. We must love each other and risk our all for the truth, because God commands us so.”

Wowowee!

Please…This is so grossly unfair to President GMA, for she is not credible as a truth monger — this is not her core competence or nature. Why push the incongruous and run the risk of making her solemn Easter message sound like a bouncy, clownish Easter bunny?

My unsolicited advice to GMA’s imagemakers, ghostwriters and propagandists is to just focus on and capitalize on her believable strengths such as her political will and cunning, her zeal for economic reforms, her legendary work ethic. There’s no need to make her look like Mother Teresa!

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Thanks to Senator Manuel “Lito” Lapid for humbly allowing me to ask him seemingly impertinent questions at a recent lunch in Edsa Shang Hotel’s Summer Palace resto, because I believe our politics at times shouldn’t be too serious. As the Joker (played so convincingly by the late actor Heath Ledger) said so often in The Dark Knight: “Why so serious?”

Regal Films boss Mother Lily Y. Monteverde was suggesting that I feature him in S magazine, the glossy entertainment monthly of which I’m editor in chief. Senator Lapid, whom I didn’t initially recognize because he had shaved off his moustache, said he wants to run for Pampanga governor next year.

Here’s my first intoxicated (no, I didn’t get drunk drinking non-alcoholic fresh fruit juice and getting a stuffed toy prize from the resto, which puzzled the Senator) question: “Senator, your colleague Senator Chiz Escudero recently told me at a recent dinner that he couldn’t forget one of your old movies he saw on cable TV — that you can kill two bad guys with just one bullet? Chiz said your gun had only one last bullet, then you got out a knife, threw the knife in the air and then you shot the bullet into the knife, which then instantaneously sliced the bullet into two pieces and fantabulously killed the two bad guys. Whoa! Senator, how did you ever come up with this kind of stunt?”

Senator Lito Lapid said that it was in his old movie San Basilio, where he played the character Julio Valiente. He explained that trick was inspired by the antics of the then popular Japanese cartoon series Voltes V.

When I further inquired why then did President Ferdinand Marcos order a ban on my then boyhood favorite TV series, Senator Lito Lapid’s chief of staff Atty. Filmer Gueco Abrajano replied: “Perhaps Marcos felt it featured too much violence for a TV cartoon series.”

Unsatisfied with that explanation, I pressed Senator Lapid to explicate why Marcos became such a gigantic KJ to us kids then. As fast as he used to pull out his guns in his films, he said: “Mas sikat na kasi noon si Voltes V kay President Marcos (Voltes V was then already becoming more popular than President Marcos).”

Was that all?

Senator Lapid then laughingly shot back another reply: “Isa pang rason, yung hand sign ni Voltes V na victory sign, pareho din yun sa hand sign ng KBL party ni Marcos, kaya siguro nainis siya (Another reason is that the hand sign of Voltes V is the victory sign similar to the KBL party of Marcos).” Bingo!

Pampanga seems to be an amazing place as this movie actor wants to reclaim his old post as Pampanga governor, and his rumored rivals are President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s eldest child Congressman Juan Miguel “Mikee” Arroyo and alleged jueteng lord Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda’s son, Lubao Mayor Dennis Pineda. What about the formidable and idealistic incumbent Governor Among Ed Panlilio, the Catholic priest?

What about the reliable info I got that President GMA is now constructing a new house in her late dad’s Lubao town, supposedly in preparation for an unprecedented run as either congresswoman or member of parliament in 2010?

If all of the abovementioned will indeed rumble in the 2010 election, Pampanga will be a microcosm of Philippine politics and the ideal setting for an exciting Gabriel Garcia Marquez magic realism novel!

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Upon hearing about broadcaster and 2010 senatoriable Ted Failon’s wife having been shot in their home, former President Joseph Estrada was quoted by reporter Jose Rodel Clapano in a front-page Philippine Star news report as saying: ““I am very sad to hear the news. But I cannot elaborate on that because I do not know the bottom line of the incident.”

Did Erap mean he wanted to get to the bottom of the incident?

Pardon me for impetuously correcting your misuse of “bottom line” — this is just for the sake of the national interest — because correct English is important for the Philippine economy. Seriously!

Here are three correct meanings of “bottom line” and some examples of their proper usage:

1. The line in a financial statement that shows net income or loss: “We should check on our employees’ required weekly reading of Wilson Lee Flores’ corny columns and their effect — if any — on the bottom line of the company!”

2. The final result or statement: “We do not care if he or she is a VIP, the bottom line is that the English language shouldn’t be allowed to be butchered!”

3. The main or essential point: “A lot can happen between now and the May 2010 elections, especially with so many cynical politicians, generals and clowns running under all sorts of so-called parties, but the bottom line is we the silent majority of well-meaning decent citizens should keep faith in genuine democracy and vigorously uphold the highest standards of good governance!”

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