An incredible election

If you go by the news reports, everybody – La Presidenta, most vocally of all – has been calling for and praying for honest and credible elections. The fact is that almost everybody I’ve met expects massive cheating and fraud. Incredible.

Why should people go out and vote today, if that’s the case? The obvious answer is that we – you and I – must vote. We must express the will to fight for democracy.

What if our ballots are not counted? This the skeptics and the "knowledgeable" ask. We nonetheless have the obligation, if only to ourselves, to declare who should be our President, Vice-President, and other leaders of our nation.

All the high-faluting, motherhood (with apologies to yesterday, Mother’s Day) statements aside, we owe it to everyone in this embattled country to rage, as the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas said against the dying of the light. You don’t have to shout it from the mountaintops, and from the rooftops: This is the leader I want! If you don’t vote, then don’t complain later.

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Let me say it. This old fella, yours truly, has covered eight Presidents – yep, the Ancient Mariner was my kid brother – and eleven elections. (During Marcos martial law, of course, it was called "selection" instead.) This is the worst election of them all.

Aside from the widely expressed apprehension (excuse me for the sweeping assertion, for I’m no pollster) that cheating has been mounted on an organized scale, the reputation of the Commission on Elections is at an all-time low. Even that 60 per cent "credibility" mark given the Comelec by the poll surveyors a week ago is remarkably generous. Not only is the Comelec not altogether trusted, but its Chairman, Ben Abalos, is in the hospital.

We won’t mention the Supreme Court’s repudiation of the Chairman’s stubbornly-pushed Comelec "quick count" (it won’t happen), nor his pre-collapse dismal approval rating of 26 per cent. The fact that Commissioner Rufino Javier, owing to seniority, had to be hastily chosen as "acting Chairman" of the government’s poll body, already hampers the system of bringing in, counting, tabulating and canvassing the ballots.

The expectation of dagdag-bawas galore is already worrisome. Now, we’re going to the polling precincts today with the head of the election commission already in his sickbed.

Yesterday, the five candidates for the Presidency went to a "unity" Mass organized by former President Corazon C. Aquino in the San Agustin Church in Intramuros, to pray for honest and peaceful elections.

Only God knows what was in each heart as they prayed. It was at least a good photo opportunity. Someone once said, "Do your best, and God will do the rest." This is a motto as good as they come. But God, if you ask me, won’t meddle. As the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy remarked in one of his short stories: "God sees the truth, but waits."

Today is the Moment of Truth. The truth about cheating. Will our "democracy" survive? Of course, but only if we keep on punching.

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Cable News Network (CNN) rang me up from Hong Kong last Friday. Yesterday, CNN’s Manila Bureau phoned me to confirm that I would be interviewed on TV, direct from their studio-office here by CNN International from Atlanta (Georgia).

Sus, I’ll be, in fulfillment of part of the Andy Warhol prediction, granted my 15 seconds (not 15 minutes) of fame. What shall I tell CNN? I’m wracking my brains already.

What will I say: "It’s almost as difficult to practice democracy in the Philippines, as it is to bring democracy to Iraq"? Sounds trite, even as one speaks. And, besides: Remember Florida. George "Dubya" Bush even enjoyed the Home Court advantage over poor Al Gore. Dubya’s brother Jeb Bush was Governor of the State. Don’t mean to imply familial hanky-panky, or the battle of the Supreme Courts, or some dagdag-bawas (gee, they even reverted to "manual") in the Cuban-American and Pinoy-American and other communities there.

Somehow, we still hope that enough patriotic and courageous people, even those primed to take part in fraud, will, in the end, stand up to be counted. Do the right thing, and refuse to do The Nasty.

A fearless forecast? The pollsters have already done their thing – giving GMA the "edge" over FPJ. As for me, I’m a bit uneasy over such easy "arithmetic", whether addition or multiplication. How do we know whether GMA, or even FPJ, is really that far ahead of Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, or, as I’ve pointed out yesterday, Brother Eddie Villanueva?

In the case of our friend, ex-Secretary and ex-Senator Raul Roco, he, too, has fought the Good Fight. And, certainly, he’s still in the race despite his illness. He’s shown guts, chutzpah, brilliance in experience and speech. Heartbreakingly, he was for months in the lead during the preliminaries, but the goal of the Presidency has been slipping daily farther from his grasp.

Lacson, for his part, says he’ll spring a surprise. He’ll be the "Zapatero of this election," he vows. By "Zapatero" he’s not referring to a shoemaker, but to Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the 43-year-old underdog Socialist contender, who streaked through at the last minute to topple the ruling Partido Popular contender, ex-Deputy Minister Mariano Rajoy, and bring the Socialists to power. Zapatero had been downgraded in the media as "bambi", decided by one columnist "an innocent and idealist fawn", but on Sunday, March 14, had been surprisingly voted to the Presidency cum Prime Ministership by an upsurge of the angry electorate. As the world press described it, in their subsequent editorials, it was "An Upset in Spain".

Could Lacson, or Brother Eddie, for that matter, stage "An Upset in España Extension"?

Susmariosep. This is a land where anything can happen. Since disaster seems to be our daily diet, who knows?

But to repeat the mantra: GMA holds the high ground. The Equity of the Incumbent. The Equity of… the Counting? Why, there’s the Iglesia Ni Cristo, El Shaddai’s Brother Mike, and the Makati Business Club, to cite just a few major factors. And promises to keep. And there, too, is Kabayan Noli de Castro.

FPJ, for his part, declares: "I will win!" (He didn’t even have to and, "basta, I will win!" No matter that it rained heavily on Da King’s and Loren Legarda’s Makati parade. Thousands of the Faithful stayed braving the downpour, to hear Panday’s fighting speech, well, short but sweet. They’ll troop to the polls to vote for Panday today, despite flu or broncho-pneumonia.

Speaker Jose de Venecia, who rang me up yesterday, staunchly denied that the Philippine Air Force had "seeded the clouds" to induce the rains, which continued to fall even when no longer… er, needed.

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What JDV actually wanted to clarify yesterday was that he had really raised the hand of his rival in the 1998 Presidential fight, the victor, Joseph Ejercito Estrada, "within three days" of the latter’s landslide triumph. "I could have delayed this, even for week, but I saw the need to give the clear victory, Erap, time to mobilize his new government before June 30," Joe reiterated.

JDV, by the way, is running unopposed in his now bailiwick in Pangasinan, and, surely, deserved to be re-elected.

Who can ever imagine a Congress without "Sunshine Joe" and his Rainbow Coalition? JDV is the glue who holds the fractious groups in our legislature together.

De Venecia, at my urging, revealed that the ‘Madrid type" threat posed against the President and the elections had been organized by Islamic terorrists linked to the Jemaah Islamiyah. This is the reason, he explained, GMA had cancelled the K-4 miting de avance. "It’s for this reason," JDV said, "Metro Manila has been saturated with 23,000 soldiers and police reinforcements."

He said that ten terrorist-suspects had been arrested in Nueva Ecija. A plot has been uncovered, he underscored, to violently destroy the election. He even referred to a "Balik-Islam" group composed of former Filipino Christians who were converted to Islam in the Middle East, then put through terrorist-training, and are back still carrying innocent credentials (meaning that they’re still posing as "Christians", Joe?). In any event, De Venecia stressed, "We must be on the alert on Election Day, especially."

There you are.

As for the "Memorandum of Agreement" between his Lakas-CMD and the Philippine Guardian Brotherhood International, dated April 21, 2004, JDV declared, "Yes, we made a deal."

Of course, for clarity’s sake, he faxed me a copy of the 2-page Agreement, signed by him and by Senator Gregorio Honasan as National Chairman and President of PGBI and Chairman, Senate Committee on Peace, Unification and Reconciliation. It was also signed by Gov. Rodolfo del Rosario, Secretary-General of Lakas-CMD, and witnessed by Ambassador Joe Romero (of Opus Dei) and Gringo’s uncle, businessman and militant citizen Mel Verano.

What about the controversial PGBI "sample ballot"? Joe insisted it plumps for GMA for President, and Noli de Castro for Vice President.

So there.

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THE ROVING EYE… I have been besieged by friends asking me to endorse their candidacies. I regret I don’t do these things, especially on the local level. (I’m not conceited enough, anyway, to believe my endorsement will have any effect.) Sure, I’ve always been full of praise for good guys like Fred Lim, etc., even when they’re not running for anything – but Fred is a sure winner, now. I did make an exception in the case of former SEC Chairman Perfecto "Jun" Yasay, one of our finest, who’s running for the Senate on the Alyansa ng Pag-Asa Roco ticket not just to extol his ability and virtue, but to try to remind voters that Yasay is running for the Senate… My final plug goes to former Secretary, former Senator, former Congressman, Heherson "Sonny" Alvarez, who’s running as an independent for the Senate. "Independents" always find it toughest of all. (I think Gringo Honasan’s triumph in politics is that he ran and won as an independent, the first to do so, even if he got only a three-year term. But his electoral protest is still pending for the other "three years," he says.) In the case of Sonny Alvarez, he was an authentic hero of the anti-dictatorship fight during the Marcos hegemony, and he’s always battled for idealistic causes, even when such advocacies made him unpopular among his colleagues. Go for it, Sonny! Beat the odds. Remain proudly and bravely indepenent!