All those futile forecasts are boring

Everybody turned seer, prophet, soothsayer, or pundit during the past few days for nothing better to do. Having gotten all those fearless or fearful forecasts off our chests, let’s relax. So, we’re in the Year 2004. So what?

Let’s just resolve to do our best, and leave it to God to do the rest.

The coming elections? Everybody looks forward to them. It’s our national sport. In the provinces, electoral campaigns provide both entertainment and cash-flow. In the cities, they supply excitement, comedy, and a switch from the boring everyday routine, supply a torrent of verbal pollution to add to the daily pollution we breathe.

The usual "doom and gloom" predictions have been trotted out. As always, there’s loose talk about revolution, upheaval, a "revolt of the masses" (a prospect so ancient it far antedated Karl Marx and Ortega y Gasset), a mutiny, a coup (coup-coup once more with feeling), the people storming the barricades if a popular presidential candidate is cheated (which one? take your pick), and don’t forget the constant terrorist threat.

Among the cuckoo developments of our cuckoo legal system, a TRO has been issued by a court on the motion of one faction of our Knights of Rizal to stop another faction of the Knights of Rizal from speaking for JR, or conducting any event in our national hero’s honor. Susmariosep. When Rizalists are squabbling with each other, we might as well expand that debate ad absurdum to "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin".

But I guess that’s the Pinoy way. Without tempests in a teapot, we’d all die of boredom.

Therefore, take heart. The Year 2004 will be more of the same, despite all the dark portents of the crystal-ball gazers. Since my own crystal-ball has been cracked for decades, I never venture any prognostications – thus saving myself from embarrassment each time reality contradicts my romantic fantasies.

Yet, it’s the fact that we Filipinos, rich or poor, are romantics that we endure. We laugh at our miseries, we laugh at ourselves, we dare to dream. Endure? I’m forever a disciple of that wonderful promise uttered by the late Senate President Eulogio "Amang" Rodriguez a lifetime ago. I’ve repeated it ad nauseam, I know, but it’s indubitably true: "In the long of time, we shall success."

I can feel it, and so can you!

* * *

Thanks to all the terrific people, friends all, who sent me text greetings during Christmas and New Year’s. (And those who sent Christmas cards!) We are indeed the texting capital of the planet. Those greetings and sentiments touched me beyond all words. But I won’t get maudlin, just say "thank you" and may God bless you all!

One of the most original texts, and I must share it with you, declared: "Adios cuarta adorada gastos piso cada letra, Smart y Globe kumikita nuestra pitaka ubos na, mi daliri nginig na di mapigil txt kita porque muy espesyal ka U Feliz Año Nuevo!" This is not Taglish but Tag-Kastila, so I gingerly translate this play on Jose Rizal’s Mi Ultimo Adios or Last Farewell, which I trust is not subject to the TRO. Our hero’s opening line in his poem, written just before his execution was, of course, "Adios, patria Adorada" or "farewell, beloved Fatherland." Here, the message says: "Farewell, my beloved cash, I spend for each text-letter, Smart and Globe make so much money while my wallet is now empty, yet my fingers are shaking, I can’t stop myself from texting you because you’re very special. Happy New Year." Guess the sender must have directed the same text to a dozen other special friends, but it was cute, wasn’t it? It warmed the cockles of my heart – not to mention tickling the funny bone. (What a relief to get away this season with those old-fashioned, probably outworn, but still accurate metaphors.)

Indeed – Feliz Año Nuevo to you all!

That’s what my late Lolo, Don Agrifino Villaflor, revered back home in Ilocoslovakia as Apo Pinong, used to solemnly greet even us kids every New Year. He was Number Two top man in the old Bureau of Customs, pre-war, but he never could afford to – or perhaps chose not to – buy a car. He went to work by public transportation. He brought along a packed lunch. Would you believe? My mama was so proud of him. He was, pardon the bromide, a gentleman of the old school.

* * *

One mini-prediction which came true was that Senator Loren Legarda was chosen by FPJ to be his team-mate in the coming polls.

Ronnie Poe rang up Loren – according to Loren – when she was in Cardona, Cavite, to officially ask her to join him in his drive for Malacañang.

They met twice to discuss the matter. The first meeting on Dec. 30 lasted for more than three hours, and ended up with both singing karaoke, belting out love songs like Kahit Kaunting Pagtingin. FPJ’s lovely wife, Susan Roces, was present, but they were still talking and singing when she went home. This initial planning session was held at Rod Ongpauco’s place on P. Guevarra – which is apparently FPJ’s not-so-concealed hideout.

Another meeting took place the next day in Ronnie’s home in Greenhills West.

Panday, signing the letter with two signatures, – i.e. "Ronnie" and "Fernando Poe, Jr." – on stationery with the brand-name on top simply saying "FPJ", certified his choice of Loren in writing.

The missive, dated December 30, went:

"Dear Loren, I am pleased to personally inform you that I have chosen you to be my running mate for the 2004 elections. I believe that a progressive country is one where its leaders ACT – each one of them, with the sincere intention of giving his optimum best to the service of the nation and his constituency.

"I can with all conviction say that I believe that you have the makings of a good Vice President who will continuously devote her time, talents and efforts in service of the Filipino nation.

"Let our goal together be to transcend even our greatest potentials not only as individuals but as a team.

"Sincerely," etc.

Okay. That’s that. What’s left is for both contenders to file their certificates of candidacy – and the battle’s on.

* * *

As usual, Panday, in his role of The Sphinx, continues to let others speak for him – this time, the articulate verbalizer, Loren, who is no slouch at both promotion of issues and self-promotion.

I didn’t attend the press conference she gave at the Polo Club yesterday, but Loren spoke to me later and she said that Ronnie had underscored he didn’t want to conduct a gutter-level campaign of personal attacks on President GMA or her family. But when push comes to shove, or Poe comes to shove – who knows? It’s early days yet.

La Legarda declares that she and Ronnie are on identical wavelengths over the same passionate issues: Job-creation (what candidate is not?), Education (hurrah), Law Enforcement, and Agriculture (food production). Let’s hope that this time it’s not only lip-service which is paid to education. FPJ a school drop-out? Back to school everybody! In case those who are castigating and lampooning Ronnie Poe for being a school drop-out haven’t done so, they might do well to look around. The brightest, not always the best, have emigrated to other climes. Many of our businessmen and cognoscenti have apartments and homes, if not in sunny California (alas, now Arnold Schwarzenegger country), in Chicago, New York, New Jersey or Florida. Then there are our millions of OFWs, who’re abroad, not in vacation homes or mansions, but earning a living for the folks back home.

Will Loren joining him as his VP bet give Ronnie the push he needs? Mind you, whatever some may say, including herself, Loren Legarda got to be Senate election topnotcher owing to her media stardom on ABS-CBN. She’s pitted this time, however, against another ABS-CBN topnotcher, Senator Noli "Magandang Gabi, Bayan" de Castro. In his column yesterday, Neal H. Cruz asked the inevitable question: ". . . who of their two stars will the Lopezes support? Observers believe it would be De Castro as he is the more obedient."

Truly, Loren is a very stubborn lady, many of our mutual friends observe. Will FPJ have trouble with her in the long run, or will the sweet relationship continue?

When I wrote that FPJ would pick Loren and she might no longer be "Little Orphan Annie", some who claimed to be "in the know" rushed over to me to "correct" my mistake. They maintained that Loren wouldn’t be chosen because she’s not a team-player, and always wants to have her way, and she would "prove an embarrassment, by contradicting him, to FPJ." They suggested that the real frontrunners for Ronnie’s vice presidential runningmate were either Senator Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan or ex-Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago. Why? Because, they maintained, FPJ would need – in the crunch – military support.

Many objections, too, were raised by the Erap camp. Is that why former President Estrada is leaving for surgery in Stanford, Palo Alto, only on January 24 or thereabouts? Because his boys are still discussing with the former President "plans" for the coming elections? Please don’t leave too late, Pareng Erap, or the plane might leave without you.

As for FPJ, the same sources alleged to me, while he played the innocent for the next six months, he had been going around planning his network of campaigners in a very secretive manner. Is this true? I thought Poe was for Panday, the honest and earnest but two-fisted "blacksmith" – not M for Machiavelli. When the real FPJ stands up, what will he look like? When The Sphinx finally speaks, what will he say? Abangan.

* * *

One thing was very interesting. Last December 31 (Wednesday), the ABS-CBN’s fetching Ms. Pia Hontiveros had a fascinating yearend "New Year’s" show on her ABS-CBN slot, Strictly Politics. It turned out to be Strictly Spoof, instead, with a deadpan Pia interviewing somebody who looked and sounded eerily like Fernando Poe, Jr. alias Ronnie Poe, but began to look and sound inane. It turned out, of course, to be that inimitable comic and mimic, Willie Nepomuceno – who’s successfully done Marcos and Erap earlier almost to hilarious perfection – from perm and wi-dow’s peak to voice.

The spoof lasted so long that even the brilliant Willie ran out of dialogue and started improvising madly. The worst problem is that the "show" was so solemnly conducted, there was very little, indeed almost no mention (outside of a gift in the form of a big box, wrapped in a pretty ribbon, being shoved at the fake FPJ, but it wasn’t for FPJ "but for Willie N. . . ") that the figure on screen wasn’t FPJ but Willie Nepomuceno doing a spoof on him.

I know of two very prominent Balikbayan professionals, one of them a leading doctor from New Jersey, who really believed the buffoon on TV was FPJ. They exclaimed to me at dinner that night that they were aghast that Ronnie Poe was so "stupid and frivolous", and, horrors, "was this the man who might be the next President of the Philippines"?

I suspect that a lot of people who weren’t familiar with the real Ronnie Poe, or FPJ, and the clever mimicry and fantastic showmanship of Willie, had the impression they were really seeing FPJ on Pia’s normally sobersided program – remember, the one on which ex-President Erap had tripped up by asserting that, in truth, he had signed the fatal document "Jose Velarde".

Sus, shouldn’t ABS-CBN have clearly announced in the program that it wasn’t Poe but Nepomuceno doing a spoof on FPJ? Probably no malice intended – but there are those who think it was the Opening Salvo.

This is the Political Comedy, I suppose, Philippine style. Wait till things begin heating up.

Until then, Feliz Año Nuevo! In the feli-city sweepstakes, there ain’t no business like show biz.