Campaigns wilting in the summer heat

The campaign is getting hotter and hotter. In Metro Manila and Luzon, of course, this remark could refer to the weather. Yesterday was a scorcher. The sun beat down relentlessly – sapping everyone of energy and, in a side-effect, optimism.

What will come of the "unity" talks will naturally have a decisive effort by the shape of the political environment as the final countdown begins – with only 21 days left to E-Day.

All of a sudden, it’s crunch-time. This will be the longest and most agonizing week of the electoral contest, the make-or-break week, to be specific.

The old saying that marriages are made in heaven certainly doesn’t apply to political "marriages". Those are forged on earth, based on very earthy considerations. The various opposition candidates must make no mistake about it, even as they scoff at the "manipulated" surveys as they dub them. True, you can lie with statistics, but in poll surveys even the most astute number-Svengalis cannot falsify too much. At least halfway into the prevarication must be a kernel of the truth.

It’s admirable to see his vice presidential running-mate former Tarlac Vice Governor Hermie Aquino and Pag-asa senatorial candidate Perfecto "Jun" Yasay trying to keep ex-Secretary Raul Roco’s candidacy alive. Aquino has been announcing that in Houston, Texas, where he’s being treated. Roco is "up and about" and will come back soon to resume his campaign. Can you believe it? Seeing is believing.

Can Raul really come back like actor John Wayne once did, declaring, "I licked the big C"? (Wayne meant, of course, "cancer"). What Raul may not be able to lick is the even bigger C – the calendar. Time is ticking away, and, as in basketball, it’s almost the "last two minutes".

As for "God’s candidate", or supposed-to-be, Brother Eddie Villanueva’s doing a useful thing by continuing to remind everyone that God and the teachings of Jesus must be brought back into politics, as into everyday life. He’ll take away votes from two of the frontrunning candidates, which is what really bothers them.

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Finally, there’s the most critical dickering of all: The "merger" discussions between Fernando Poe Jr. and Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson.

It’s down to this: Merge or lose, whatever the Angelic voices, Star-stuck worshippers, the Tarot cards, or the magic of Feng Shui may tell the contenders.

The truth is that the incumbent President, who’s been campaigning non-stop since the year 2001, with all the resources and revenues of government at her command, plus other resources accumulated "on command", holds the high ground. I didn’t say moral high ground, but the Equity of the Incumbent plus, some loudly allege, the Equity of the Comelec.

The usual phrase invoked to describe one who’s in power in the Palace is "the sitting President". But this President doesn’t sit. She’s all over the place, gladhanding, dimpling, handing out goodies, a motorized, chopper-hopping Thumbelina throwing her "thumbs-up" everywhere.

If FPJ and Ping don’t get together, then they’ll divide, she’ll conquer.

The next question which only the election itself will resolve is whether Da King did the right thing in making that pilgrimage to the toppled Dictator Marcos’s waxen tomb, getting the endorsement of the Shoe Lady – I mean, former First Lady Imeldific – then going to deposed President Joseph "Erap" Estrada to get fond "blessing" from the Birthday Boy.

In sum, Panday – the crusading hero – has linked himself to the "martial law" tyrant, and a deposed Chief Executive (himself a former Macoy protégé in his own time). Well, if Erap para sa mahirap can transfer his devotees to FPJ come ballot-casting time, this may be significant – or it may not.

With May 10 approaching at wrap-speed (will the tabulation be warped, too?), we’ll know soon enough.

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Correction. I hasten to correct the "misinformation" I published yesterday with regard to funeral arrangements for our dear friend, the late Marietta Enriquez-de la Haye Jousselin, also known, by her first marriage, as Marietta Guerrero to her children and many friends. My apologies for the mistake.

Marietta’s ashes arrived from Paris yesterday afternoon, accompanied by her husband, our friend Henri de la Haye Jousselin, and her children, Rosanna, Luis, and Lorenzo Guerrero. There was an overnight vigil among family and close relatives, at the Balmori residence.

THIS MORNING, Monday, April 19, at 7 a.m., there will be a Mass at the Capilla de la Virgen of the Santuario de San Antonio in Forbes Park, Makati.

Tomorrow, also at 7 o’clock in the morning, there will be a Mass for Marietta in the same Church. On April 21, Wednesday, after a 9 a.m. Mass, her ashes will be transferred to St. James Church in Alabang.

Ms. Chita Z. Bito alerted this writer to my error, and is handling many of the arrangements. The family will make its final announcements later.

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Marietta led a full and energetic life, and was, on top of her many achievements, a scholar. One of her undertakings was a book she published in 1994 in commemoration of the "Decade of the Centennials of Filipino Nationalism, Nationhood and the Philippine Revolutionary Movement, the Centennial of the Katipunan" and "The Decade of Philippine Culture".

She dedicated this little gem of an opus to her father, Col. Manuel P. Enriquez, who "died heroically in the service of our country on August 30, 1944)".

What led to the book was the fact that she had stumbled (her own words) across four articles in the Revue de Paris on the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898, written by a French naval officer, whose personal account had not been heard of before. "Personal narratives of wars by generals and admirals are fairly numerous," Marietta recounted, "but accounts by lower-ranking officers are rare."

The merit of the work she discovered was that it was the only account written by a French officer who was on hand to describe the Battle of Manila Bay in which America’s Commodore George Dewey sank the Spanish fleet, or what was called a fleet, under Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasaron – while the Spanish vessels were "at anchor!" in that May 1898 encounter.

Entirely fluent in French, Marietta translated that account by a 21-year old French naval lieutenant who had originally signed his manuscript, "Lieutenant X" but was identified later as Aime Ernest Motsch. The story was culled from his diary kept from April 28 to August 31, 1898.

Marietta took this "worm’s-eye view" of that Battle, which turned out to be a farce, it seems (no contest really, for the Spaniards lost all their ships, and 200 dead, while the only American fatality was a sailor who died – from heatstroke).

In the volume, entitled by Marietta The Diary of a French Office on the War in the Philippines 1898, is a fascinating final chapter, dubbed, "Tagal’s (i.e. Filipinos) and Yankees." The subtitle of that segment is dated Wednesday, August 17, 1898: The Americans Reveal Their Intentions.

Wrote Lt. Motsch: "I have observed these Filipinos for almost a year. Once again they find themselves being oppressed, a state from which they thought they had been freed… in 1898, they had not conquered the Spaniards but rather found themselves once again under the yoke, except that this time their chains were riveted by the Americans.

"The Great Republic, as (Emilio) Aguinaldo called it, promised them their liberty by spring of that year and used this pretext to crush Spain. If by the month of September 1898 the Philippines would no longer be Spanish, undoubtedly the United States owes this to the Filipinos who assisted them in the bombardment and siege of the city (of Manila).

"The Mighty Republic (America) now considers the country American since it is no longer Spanish… In a manner of speaking, the Americans are already the successors of Spain. They have started making their peace with the established powers, with the Church, the religious leaders, and the English traders. In the name of the mighty dollars, they are massacring the native population as did the Spaniards in the name of the Church.

"The Tagals are banned from Manila, now considered conquered territory. The Philippine Republic and the freedom of the Filipinos lasted only long enough to give the Americans time to substitute their tyranny for that of Spain. If the Tagals really deserve freedom – a freedom which the Americans six months earlier dared to guarantee – all they have to resort to is a mass uprising.

"The Americans, desirous of becoming masters of the Philippines, are beginning to behave as the Spaniards did. They, too, are convinced that there is barely any difference between these savages and monkeys. At Easter, they were indignant that some dared treat the Filipino people as a free nation. By the Feast of the Assumption, these very Americans denied the allegations they had made at Easter. And on both occasions, the civilized world stood back to witness the emergence of another power in the Philippines."

These words, I will probably be reminded later, were penned by a Frenchman: Just as the French were, and continue to be critical of how the Americans went into Iraq.

Yet, shorn of its… well, jaundiced outlook… it may provide some explanation as to why the Americans are finding it a new "living hell" in Iraq. Even if the inflammatory Muslim cleric, Muqtada Sadr, and his 10,000-man Shi’ite militia (which he styles the Army of the Mahdi – great shades of Gordon being shot down in Khartoum) were not there to attack the US forces, and Islamic jihadis were not kidnapping hostages, the Americans’ intentions remain suspect. Are they there, resentful Arabs mutter, to occupy Iraq, not democratize it, and to seize its oil?

In our case, an awakened Aguinaldo, the angry Katipuneros, and our Philippine Revolutionary Army fought back, giving blow for blow for more than three years.

But we lost.