If you depend too much on feng shui, you might end up as chop suey

Returning presidential candidate Raul Roco is booked to guest on our Impact 2004 television program on Friday next week – April 30.

This means that it’s true he plans to return from his medical check-up in Houston, Texas, as announced next Wednesday, April 28.

What else is there to say except that we’re happy? Abangan his "I have returned" appearance.

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The "unity" talks appear to be kaput. That’s the word we got yesterday.

It seems that Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson told an emissary trying to schedule the next meeting with FPJ: "I won’t slide down. I’m running for President. We can negotiate from that base."

Naturally, there will be no negotiations. Do you think FPJ will even consider sliding down himself? When you've been the Top Star for many years, you never accept Second Billing. That’s what is called, in techno-speak, the "star complex".

Eleven percent in the Pulse Asia ratings, never going above 12 percent in all other surveys, obviously doesn’t faze Ping (Kamay na bakal) Lacson. He obviously thinks, as he always declare, that he’ll win. What gives him this conviction – some say, over-confidence? There’s a report that he believes in feng shui, and his tea-leaves readers have promised him victory. Or is it karma?

I’m sorry to have to say that only Vice Presidents can depend on feng shui. You know: If a President’s plane crashes, or a President gets deposed by Edsa Dos, the defecting military and the Supreme Court.

The guy who can possibly (though this is remote) benefit from feng shui is Vice President Teofisto "Tito" Guingona. Remember him? Tito surfaced briefly when he declared his support for FPJ – then he vanished from sight. Elbowed out by the you-know-what Gang?

As for Ping, while he’s got all the sterling qualities of a leader, this strange devotion to the Fates is unsettling. He’s got much to lose in this election. He knows that if GMA is re-elected (and Jose Pidal rides back triumphant on a sway-backed nag), he’s literally dead-ball. Emigration may be an option – if he gets that far. Oh, well. Those who subscribe too much to the magic of feng shui might find themselves chop suey.

There are those who say that it’s much like the Emperor Napoleon and Adolf Hitler. They both thought they could conquer Russia – in winter.

FPJ for his part might do well to get his act together – advertise his "platform" and give one good, hell-raising speech, preferably not just on the rolling pogi-wagon but on television.

Because La Presidenta just keeps rolling along. Pulling out all stops. Going for gimmick after gimmick. Hyping up her campaign. And her propagandists are, as expected, dishing out those clever press releases, claiming that everybody’s "defecting" to her. Who reads "denials" in this country today?

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"I was misquoted. I never said it!"

That’s what Chairman Ben Abalos of the Commission on Elections declared when he came to EDSA Shangri-La yesterday to join me for coffee.

He said our reporter had met him at the press conference he gave prior to the launching of the Comelec’s "Test Your Precinct project" at the EDSA Shangri-La hotel (the same venue) last Friday. Abalos said the only thing he had predicted was that "we are expecting a 75 percent voter turn-out".

Anything else published, he asserted, were apparently our STAR reporter Joe Aravilla’s own "extrapolations".

Since the Comelec Chairman has clarified he didn’t make any prognostication about the alleged one million vote difference in winning margin between any two candidates, this newspaper stands corrected. We apologize for sloppy reporting. And the discomfort it caused the Chairman.

In the wind-up to May 10, anything the Comelec or its officials say or do will continue to be under intense public scrutiny. Which is why it’s good that Chairman Abalos set this matter straight very quickly.

There are other sticky questions, however, which remain unanswered. The Comelec must act even more swiftly to reassure the people that their votes will be honestly counted, and the elections won’t be "rigged".

The Comelec remains under suspicion. For starters, it’s clearly not ready.

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Our political comedy has been lampooned on the front page of the International Herald Tribune yesterday.

Indeed, how could IHT Correspondent Raymond Bonner resist reporting its laughable aspects? (As the old saying goes: "It only hurts when we laugh.")

In an article datelined Manila, complete with page one photo of a tricycle carrying the GMA poster, "Gloria Serbisyong Totoo!!!", Bonner opened up with this: "If politics is theater, surely no playhouse is quite like the Philippines. There she was, Imelda Marcos, who danced with Governor Ronald Reagan 35 years ago when her husband was president. Last week she was onstage at a rally for Fernando Poe Jr., one of this nation’s most popular actors, as fireworks exploded overheaded.

"What is Poe, a 64-year-old high school dropout, running for? Why president, of course."

Gee whiz. Even the photograph showing tricycles bearing GMA’s message depicts us as a backward, pedicab, footpedal, economy.

"Only in the Philippines," the international newspaper goes on to jibe. This is what "Filipinos often say, with a shrug of resignation about their politics."

Bonner concedes that "Poe has a chance of defeating the incumbent President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. She moved up from vice president in 2001 after another actor-turned-president, Joseph Estrada, was forced out of office in the face of allegations that he accepted $11 million in kickbacks from a gambling kingpin."

The article notes that "the charismatic Poe and the intellectual Arroyo are virtually tied, each at 32 percent of the vote, according to the latest poll by Social Weather Stations..."

Bonner inquires: "What explains Poe’s success against Arroyo, daughter of a former president? ‘He’s a nice guy,’ said Ronnie Curacho, a 58-year-old barber, explaining why he would vote for Poe.

"The poor often determine the outcome of elections in this country, with fraud and violence in strong supporting roles. Over 80 percent of this nation’s 82 million people are considered lower class, living barely above or below the poverty line."

Moreover, the piece points out "...in marked contrast to the United States, a high percentage of lower-income people vote, as high as 80 percent. In part it is because the country’s 40,000 village leaders make sure they do, often by handing out $10 to $20 as an incentive..." Et cetera.

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There’s much more, of course. However, let’s focus on that ludicrous portrait of Imeldific cavorting on the stage to boost FPJ’s candidacy in Laoag, Ilocos Norte. Do you think this helped Ronnie Poe? If you ask me, it put on him the odious stamp of bad memory: A reminder of the excesses of the discredited Marcos dictatorship.

In truth, Ilocos Norte wasn’t even the grandstanding Shoe Lady’s bailiwick – she’s from Leyte where the Romualdezes seem to be doing well enough for themselves, anyway. Why didn’t the former Superma’am just yield the stage to her children, who’ve actually taken the helm up north? At least, Ilocos Norte Governor Ferdinand "Bonget" Junior and Rep. Imee Marcos might then have telegraphed a more upbeat image for themselves, such as – without being "disloyal" to dear, dead Dad – "We’re the new Marcoses." Subliminally, their plea would be: "Don’t blame us."

Alas, Super-Mama couldn’t resist projecting herself into the limelight to remind us all – usefully perhaps – of that rotten former regime and Unfinished Business.

Let’s hope this label of "Macoy’s Successor" and "The Man Who’ll Bury FM in the Heroes’ Libingan" doesn’t stick to FPJ. But I’m afraid it will. That expedition to Ilocoslovakia should have been more deftly handled.

When all is said and done, Panday is not just running against La Gloria. He’s running to overcome the selfish cliques in his pangkat. The pity of it is that, even if his sincerity is without doubt, he might manage to propel back into the Senate and other high positions, not merely some of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalyse, but an entire raft of Bad Guys who have no place in a Crusade for Reform or Liberation.

The only balancing factor is that GMA’s Senate slate looks no better. And the worst nightmare of all is that the scum on each opposing side could be the ones elected.

Bonner is this sense is right. There’s no "playhouse" quite like the Philippines. And it’s a Bad Play we’re witnessing.