Where are they now? / Mike Tyson –finito

During the election campaign, the world was their oyster, every day of every week of every month, or almost. Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ for short), Sen. Panfilo (Ping) Lacson, Raul Roco, Bro. Eddie Villanueva crashed into our living rooms and bedrooms in an unending media entertainment, "shock and awe" assault. For the first time, Filipinos saw the elections up close as broadcast and print media poured it on with the sights, the smells, the colors, even the pungent arm odor of the campaign.

Exaggeratedly, crudely, and almost tastelessly, I might add.

It was the fiesta we forecast it would be all right. Millions milled around the candidates, sniffing them, touching them, mobbing them, cheering them. Issues of national scope were never or hardly discussed. Ugh! Who cared? There were celebrities galore. The electorate eventually voted on how the candidates actually touched their lives day to day. Without any care as to what could happen tomorrow.

In the end, Gloria Macapgal-Arroyo romped off with the presidency with a comfortable, if sometimes dubious, mandate.

That’s all that mattered. Filipinos are not one to nitpick, split hairs, analyze, caterwaul to the high heavens. FPJ and his running mate Loren Legarda almost nonchalantly brought their protests to the Supreme Court. Alas and alackaday, there they will lie and be forgotten. According to Malacañang sources, it could take the Court and the Presidential Electoral Tribunal about ten years to resolve the issue. Five would be more accurate.

Meanwhile? FPJ, the Golden Boy, the Poster Boy of the elections is fast slinking into oblivion. Soon, he will be a political fossil if he is not already. And we will all be wondering why Da King landed in our midst like a gorgeous space ship, pointed irresistibly to Malacañang Palace. All contemporary presidential surveys at the time forecast he would be the next president of the Philippines. So, make way!

Were we gulled? Where did we go wrong? Why did FPJ’s magic gradually disappear?

Well, the easiest answer to that is GMA had all the resources, possibly outspending her rivals 3 to 1, even 5 to 1, with a political network unmatched in seeking to lure every voter by whatever means. I have always asked myself what was the role of Ronnie Puno (now Rep. Puno) in this spectacular triumph of GMA. He was a formidable, manipulative shadow behind the presidential victory of President Fidel Ramos in 1992. Again, he occupied center stage in the massive propaganda network of Erap Estrada who vaulted to Malacañang in 1998. Then almost unseen, he slipped into GMA’s camp.

Don’t be shy, Mrs. President. Did Ronnie do something like set up the super-secret Sulo Hotel Operations (SHO) in 1992? Supposedly the model that eventually took the name of Dagdag-Bawas?

Anyway, FPJ has virtually slid to oblivion. And we don’t expect to hear from him anymore. He was a one-shot operation reportedly crafted by Senators Edgardo Angara and Tito Sotto (with the profile of Danding Cojuangco bobbing in the near neighborhood). The operation bombed. FPJ did not come up to expectations. Malacañang diabolically used the citizenship issue to scare his big financiers. FPJ himself did not help much by donning on the clothes of The Silent Sphinx, refusing to participate in presidential debates. On the movie screen, FPJ was the Big Bucks. Outside the cinema, FPJ was the Big Droop.

’Bye, FPJ, it was nice knowing you.

Ping Lacson almost shed his old bust-’em-up, show them no mercy, take no prisoners police image during the campaign. Suited and cravated in the Senate, short sleeve-shirted as a presidential candidate, Lacson played the role of Eliott Ness to the hilt. He was a no-nonsense, law and order, straight-shooting presidential candidate. He would slay the monster of graft and corruption, jail top crooks and criminals, play no favorites, run the government as it should be run. Ramrod straight, with the metal gleam of justice on its gun.

Lacson upped the ante. He went straight for GMA’s heart. He accused her husband Mike Arroyo of being Jose Pidal, a big-bellied varmint who stuffed hundreds of millions of pesos in secret bank accounts for his wife. He almost succeeded as GMA’s presidential ratings went down. But he went too far. He dug out Mike Arroyo’s alleged extra-marital love life. This did not sit out well. He also threw back all attempts on the part of FPJ and his cabal for a reconciliation and with this almost a sure KNP shot at the presidency. Lacson made sure FPJ would lose.

This was the passion of pride taken too far. And so Ping Lacson blinked out. He was no longer a serious player in a game that required deviations, cross and double-cross. He couldn’t be that straight. He easily conceded defeat to GMA, stirring speculation they might have had a deal. What kind of a deal? This is the question rattling coffee cups until today..

Eliott Ness did a somersault. To all intents and purposes, he will not appear in Philippine politics again. This too bombed.

Raul Roco. I feel sad and defeated about this man. I fully supported him early on, convinced he was the best of the lot. And he was. But he insisted on running a campaign that was too goody-goody, too horse-and-buggy. He believed in his heart the Filipino voter had integrity and would never desert him.

Well, the Filipino voter deserted Raul and proved that campaign money had more power than campaign integrity. The media also abandoned Raul. After that, he was a goner. Oh, yes, Raul Roco was sick. That was the final nail on his political coffin.

’Bye, Raul. Now you know with a heavy heart what power politics is.

Brother Eddie Villanueva. He came late to the party. But when the party was over, he was the only one intact in the opposition, a stirring gospel manual in one hand, a rousing political battlecry in the other. The Jesus Is Lord evangelist has grown on the citizenry. His massive flock has not dispersed. He remains the bane of GMA, perhaps the only political bane. He has refused to concede to her, in fact still considers her a "bogus president".

What is Brother Eddie’s future? We don’t know. It will depend on how he plays his cards, how the future will open up to him, how he can skillfully devise the strategy that can open roads to Malacañang even before the year 2010. He has a formidable spiritual base. But new to politics, Brother Eddie has still a lot to learn in realpolitik, where Machiavelli trades punches with the Ministry of the Lord.

Stay on, Brother. There’s gospel gold, and also political gold in dem dar hills.

* * *

Mike Tyson, remember him? About five, six years ago, Iron Mike owned the world of professional boxing. Oh, he was the goods! He was huge and burly, with a wicked face and even wickeder fists which could break human bone with the greatest of ease. Mike Tyson had a mouth that must have been weaned in the latrine. He taunted, even raped his wife (wives?) and with a single punch once blew her out of their bedroom.

When he entered the ring, the frenzy was palpable. The crowd crouched like a jungle in conclave. Mike was there to destroy and he would destroy. Opponents or challengers were lucky to last more than one or two rounds as Tyson barged in as only an outraged orangutan can barge in. Fists landed, flesh and bone crackled in pain, and almost always his foe landed on the canvas, broken and dead to the world.

Well, things have changed since then.

The last time out, Mike Tyson was on the floor, in a corner of the ring, head piebald, face mutilated, looking emptily and vacuously at space, the only thing trim on his face his moustache, but everything else disheveled and defeated. This was the end of the road. Just nights ago, in Louisville, Kentucky, Danny Williams, an anonymous British pugilist, took the best shots of Iron Mike.

He was about to go down but didn’t. Instead, Williams, 31, straightened out his knees, carried Tyson to four bruising rounds before finishing him in two minutes and 51 seconds of that round. Would Mike finally retire this time? And admit he was through, as all boxing champions arrive at the time they are through because the old strength is no longer there, the reflexes, the will, the implacable courage?

The great trainer Freddie Roach, also Manny Pacquiao’s trainer, said it could be over for Iron Mike, although Mike himself would have to say it. I say that if Mike enters the ring once more, it will be like a drunken, lurching bum entering the ring. And looking for the nearest grave.The iron has left. And all that remains is Marshmallow Mike. a derelict of what was once the world’s most feared heayvweight champion.

At this stage, they never come back.