Here’s making a pitch for a couple of political candidates, specifically, who both face tall odds but certainly have a chance at upsetting the form charts for legislative seats.
First is our fellow columnist in these pages, Danton Remoto, who’s seeking to represent the 3rd Congressional District of Quezon City. Most of you readers would be familiar with his byline, as a poet, editor, and Philippine STAR columnist. A lot of you would also have been made aware by now of how his quest for proper congressional representation has proven rather quixotic, owing to the usual machinations by the powers-that-be.
Danton Remoto spearheaded the national effort to have gays represented as a party list, as well they should be. But it wasn’t to be, and Ladlad got the boot from a Comelec that’s known to look the other way, in more ways than one.
Officially, it was contended that Danton and the Ladlad org wouldn’t be able to mount a national effort. Tell that to the macho marines. Any observant Filipino would have noticed by now that gays rule his or her family. Well, okay, that could be hyperbolic, but you know what I mean. It isn’t only at your usual beauty parlors where homosexuals ply a trade and contribute to the national economy. Not only in the field of entertainment, either.
Danton himself, uhh, has been an educator, in the best university in that congressional district he hopes to represent. He is a prizewinning poet, writer and editor, with his anthologies of gay literature becoming runaway bestsellers.
The very name of the organization he leads, Ladlad, would have proven titling prescience had the Comelec accepted it as a valid party-list system contender, instead of all those dubious orgs cleverly conceived for profitable manipulation by the usual tradpols (make that trapos).
In any case, foiled this year by a Comelec that doesn’t quite enjoy the trust of the electorate, Danton did the next best thing, which was to run as a PDP-Laban candidate, under the GO. (By the by, that means Jojo Binay gets a fifth passenger in the party Volks.) Danton enjoys support from the academe, writers and artists, gays, lesbians, and everyone with a less than ultra-conservative or overly cynical outlook in that QC 3rd District.
So let’s help put a poet in Congress. It won’t be enough to offset the overwhelming number of law-breakers among our lawmakers, but it should be a good start.
You may have heard it said that poets are the real legislators of the world. What you may not know is that the word "congress" also applies, as a term of venery or grouping  much like pride of lions, gaggle of geese, school of fish  to a collection of... Guess what? Baboons. Yep. That’s right. When they band together, as they often do, it’s called a congress of baboons.
A Congressperson Danton Remoto would have his work cut out for him in that largely contemptible assembly of simian look-alikes. But let’s give this honorable candidate our support, shall we? Residents of Loyola Heights, La Vista, Ayala Heights, Pansol, Old Balara, White Plains, Corinthian, Eastwood, Acropolis, Green Meadows, Projects 2, 3 & 4, and Cubao, elect Danton Remoto!
Poets, writers, artists, educators, and all honorable women, men, lesbians and gays and whatever will thank you.
The second candidate this space is pitching for is Sonia Roco, who has a good chance of breaking into the winning dozen for the Senate, especially if all sensible voters get their act together.
Let’s face it: there are no distinguishable party policies or programs for proper choice in this election. The mainstream parties are amorphous in parallel ways, their slates put together not so much on the basis of principles and legislative agenda, but on compromises having to do with personalities and good old pragmatism.
I don’t like it that Sonia Roco, widow of Raul our role model, now has to hold hands with the rest of a roster that apparently gravitates towards a discredited former president, if only to oppose and perchance discredit the sitting president. But that’s the way it goes.
A pox on both houses is the proper response when one starts to scratch the old noggin (maybe like a baboon or chimp) while struggling to evaluate any difference in party platform. There isn’t any, so forget that exercise. If anything, this experience can only speak loudly against our readiness for a parliamentary system.
And so we scan the adversarial lists and select the personalities, or persons, across the board  those with whom we believe we can at least identify, in terms of a hopeful future: the most intelligent and hardworking, the least tainted, the fittest for senatorial conduct, among slim pickings. If we favor being regarded as extremely idealistic, we’d chuck both mainstream rosters and settle for the unknown guys representing Kapatiran, even if we’re positive none of them will make it. We might still buy the argument that a vote for Bautista, Paredes and Sison will simply send the message that we’ve had enough of trapos.
Then there’s the more likely (pragmatic?) option of marrying our personality choices with token idealism, if slots are left over. Thus, personally (!!!), I wind up with this mélange  Angara because he has undoubtedly been our most dedicated legislator; Aquino because he is young and principled, and we all owe it to his parents; Arroyo because I know him to be an intelligent and honest man; and the following for a variety of reasons: Cayetano, Escudero, Legarda, Pangilinan, Recto, Roco... Then maybe I fill up my ballot with the names of the trio of idealistic, quixotic musketeers.
Sonia Roco isn’t quite in the so-called Magic Circle yet, but let’s try to get her there. We owe it to the memory of the great man who was her husband. We owe it to Filipino womanhood, which ought to have stronger representation in the Senate. We owe it to her as she’s a fine, decent, intelligent lady, certainly better equipped for the intellectual rigors involved in lawmaking. We owe it to ourselves.
The last time we ran into Sonia Roco was at the Red & White Ball held at the NBC Tent last February, when she accepted an award from the Benedictine fathers of San Beda College, in honor of Raul the exemplary Bedan and Filipino. We told her then that we’d try to help a bit in her political campaign. And we’ve been regretful since, as breadwinning chores prevented us from turning true to our word. We hope it isn’t too late, and that this brief isn’t considered a token one.
Sonia Roco’s the real deal, folks. Or at least she’s the real Sonia who’s going for a senate seat.
All Bedans (meaning all good men), all Filipino women, Ateneans, LaSallians, Dilimanians, and Bicolanos, heck, everyone who still thinks this country can be saved from the usual baboons  let’s all help in electing Sonia Roco to the Senate!
Good luck to Sonia and Danton. Good luck to us all. And now, good luck, too, to Weber Amores of FEU and Sarah Alanzalon of Malate High School  who are set to fly to London next week as the English Speaking Union-Philippines’ student candidates for ESU’s International Public Speaking Competition.
Last week, Ed Chua of Pilipinas Shell tendered a luncheon for these two young people, with British Ambassador Peter Beckingham and our former Ambassador to the UK, Cesar Bautista, who’s ESU-Phil chair, in attendance. So too were ESU-Phil president Butch Dalisay, its treasurer Erlinda Panlilio, Sarah’s mom, Ging Alanzalon, and former RP Embassy info officer in London, the poet and writer Ed Maranan.
As it’s done in the past few years, Pilipinas Shell has generously sponsored Weber’s and Sarah’s participation in the London competition, where they will go up against some 60 other contestants from over 40 countries and ESU-International chapters.
Far Eastern University chairperson Dr. Lourdes Montinola also helped provide Weber Amores additional wherewithal, and may in fact manage to attend the competition scheduled for May 14 to 17.
For Sarah’s part, her recent triumph in the Voice of Our Youth extemporaneous speaking contest was validated by her selection as ESU-Phil’s second candidate. It’s the first time we’re actually sending a 16-year-old high-schooler. We understand that Allied Bank, which sponsored that earlier contest, was overjoyed with Sarah’s international representation, so that it pitched in with a generous travel allowance, thanks to its president Reynaldo Maclang, vice president Fabian Pagaduan and corporate affairs head Angie Barcelona. Thanks, too, to ESU-Phil board member Chichoy Campos for helping make that grant possible.
Once they get to London, Weber and Sarah will be in good hands. Loline Reed, who’s our ESU-Phil representative there, takes over with her patented homecare program and invaluable training sessions. Many thanks to Tita Loline and Tito Ken.
And finally, our gratitude goes as well to Dr. Jimmy Abad of UP, Dr. Zeny Martinez and Joven Castro of FEU, and our ESU-International 2004 grand prize winner Patricia Evangelista, for all their advice in last week’s training session with our youthful candidates.