Unification

With so much bad blood between their supporters, it would be a major surprise if Sen. Panfilo Lacson and actor Fernando Poe Jr. manage to unite today. It’s like peace between the Israelis and Palestinians: both sides know it’s for their own good, for their own survival, even, but they simply can’t resist killing each other.

Unification is the only way the opposition can manage to stop the steady rise of President Arroyo as the front-runner in this race. Lacson knows this; Poe probably knows it.

There were hopes in the opposition that deposed President Joseph Estrada, Poe’s bosom buddy and long-time boss of Lacson, could pull off a miracle today by asking the two candidates to give him for his 67th birthday a unified opposition slate. But Erap has denied he will broker the talks.

Instead a "common friend" of Lacson and Poe will deal with the tricky question of who will give way to whom.

Common sense tells you that Lacson should be the one to give way. After all, Poe may be losing traction in his campaign, but he’s still slugging it out for Number One with President Arroyo, while Lacson is languishing in fourth place, behind even Raul Roco who consistently ranks a far third in the surveys.

But we all know Lacson’s response: he doesn’t believe in surveys, which can be manipulated. Plus there’s that growing rumor that he has the Iglesia ni Cristo vote in the bag – the reason he has confidently vowed to quit the Senate and politics altogether if he receives less than three million votes on May 10. The talk is that INC leaders committed their support because of something deeper than Poe’s media bureau chief Rod Reyes suffering from "foot-in-mouth" disease.

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If the common friend pulls off a miracle, there’s the question of what to do with the opposition’s candidate for vice president, Sen. Loren Legarda.

Common sense and the surveys also tell you that Legarda should give way in case Poe or Lacson agrees to slide down. Despite the dirt dug up on President Arroyo’s running mate, Sen. Noli de Castro, Legarda simply can’t catch up with "Kabayan" in the surveys. I don’t see any improvement in the homestretch of the campaign; the text messages and stories about Legarda get nastier every day. This was hardly unexpected; De Castro had been topping surveys for both president and vice president since last year.

But perhaps Legarda and her handlers also do not believe in surveys, including those done by Poe’s cousin. And she looks like the type who thinks that it’s now or never, that she must seize the day or be forgotten by 2010, and forget her dreams of things much bigger than the vice presidency.

What to do with Legarda is another huge question mark in the opposition’s unification efforts.

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And yet both the Lacson and Poe camps must realize that with just three weeks left in the campaign, candidate Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo looks poised to pull away, leaving both of them eating her dust.

This seemed improbable just a little over four months ago, when the President filed her candidacy amid the lingering stink of the Jose Pidal scandal and jeering over her turnaround on her promise not to run. Lacson’s camp suffered massive defections and campaign funds slowed to a trickle when Poe filed his certificate of candidacy. People hailed Poe as Da King just waiting to claim his crown. The talk was that the only way the President could beat Poe was with a little help from her friends in the Commission on Elections.

People, however, didn’t think anyone as immensely popular as Poe could be immensely more clueless than his pal Erap, the first Philippine president to be impeached, and possibly the only Filipino who signs incriminating documents in the presence of a witness.

The lack of firm control by their standard-bearer has to be the principal reason for the fiasco in the Poe camp. He can’t settle disputes among his lieutenants, and he can’t set a firm direction in his campaign.

He can’t even seem to have control over his strong-willed wife, much less admonish her not to slug his local supporters. When he said Susan Roces would play no official role in a Poe presidency, she reportedly resented it and later sent the message that she was going to be one active first lady.

Not that I mind strong-willed women, but in this country, presidents – male or female – are supposed to be able to keep their spouses in check. The thinking is that if a president can’t even tell his wife to shut up, how can he tell her to stay away from, say, sardines deliveries at Customs? After Imelda Marcos, Filipinos have had enough of high-profile first ladies.

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In contrast, candidate GMA appears to have told her controversial husband to keep his head down – concentrate on Atkins, play with the dogs, do whatever he wants except be in a photo with her during the campaign. The birthday photo with the roses was unavoidable; it would’ve been bad if he weren’t in the picture. Over the weekend the First Gentleman did show up with the President in a public gathering, but told reporters that he was scared of the tough lady he had married. Now don’t enjoy the limelight too much; back to the bunkers, Mr. First Gentleman.

As in her schooling, the President has done her homework for this campaign. She has studied what an incumbent candidate can and cannot do with government resources, and has made full use of what’s available, often to the dismay of her usual critics.

She has played her strengths well and managed to downplay her weaknesses (or, in the case of her husband, keep him hidden from public view).

Even her know-it-all attitude, which can be irritating and alienating, is serving to highlight what is lacking in her chief rival.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has become the most formidable candidate in this presidential race, the candidate to beat. The opposition’s best hope of beating her is unification. We await the opposition’s move.