They talk too much - Gotcha

Either he's too stupid to understand what he's blabbering about, or he's too smart he knows his blabbering is all his audience understands.

What else to make of Joseph Estrada's reaction to surveys that show his net approval rating dropping to -13 in February and -32 in March?

"Popularity doesn't matter, it's performance that does," he brushed off the negative ratings. Yet the surveys were never about popularity; pollsters asked respondents if they were satisfied with the President's performance.

Then again, a President attains popularity from good performance, notoriety from bad. Still, Estrada was smug, and his sycophants were thumbs-up, with his remark.

Vino veritas. In wine there is truth. Blunter still, wine brings out the truth about a person. Estrada and his men presumably were sober when they talked about the surveys. So if they sounded confused or confusing, maybe it's in their true character.

Budget Sec. Ben Diokno pooh-poohed the ratings as unimportant because incomplete: they were mere telephone polls of Metro Manilans. Yet it was he who commissioned them -- using taxpayer money, of course.

Senate President Blas Ople, too, was a deluge of words but a drizzle of thought. He said the surveys excluded 95 percent of the population with no phones. Telecoms trade publications count land lines to be at least two million, and cellphones at 1.5 million. That's about 28 percent of 12.5 million households -- hardly exclusive as Ople wants people to believe.

Executive Sec. Ronnie Zamora said the people's real sentiment will be known this week, when the Social Weather Stations announces its first-quarter nationwide survey of all income and age brackets. Still Ople added that the real test of popularity will come in the 2001 election -- revealing his low view of suffrage as a popularity contest.

There are basically two types of people who don't say much -- the quiet ones and those who talk. Now, which is which? Last Friday Zamora confirmed on national radio that Press Sec. Rod Reyes and Spokesman Jerry Barican were leaving the Cabinet. Minutes later, Estrada said on provincial radio that talk about Cabinet changes was mere communist black propaganda. Duh . . .

Oscar Wilde once said he liked Wagner's martial music more than anybody's because "it is so loud, one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says." As Estrada marched to war against drugs in the Visayas last weekend, he vowed no mercy for drug dealers. Yet only months ago, he granted clemency to a convicted shabu dealer, a woman in death row. Last week, too, he stopped all executions of death convicts -- a virtual automatic commutation to life sentences if, as the law says, their executions are postponed by a year.

Men talk wisely but live foolishly, ancient Romans used to say. Estrada was right to ask the political opposition to simmer down and help the administration's economic recovery effort. LAKAS rose to the challenge, saying it will form a shadow Cabinet that would not only fiscalize but also propose alternatives. To which Estrada quickly sneered, "that shadow Cabinet will remain a shadow, a pipe dream."

When everything is said and done, more is generally said than done. People still can't get over why, at the height of a TV debate on whether Estrada was living up to his walang kamag-anak, walang kaibigan promise, he phoned in to defend his friend Dante Tan from charges of manipulating the stock market.

Estrada keeps telling the press to report on his accomplishments, too. But whenever asked what these are, he pleads for more time to see his programs through. That's probably what W.S. Gilbert meant when he said, "Though I'm anything but clever, I can talk and talk forever."

Thank you, Zen Udani, Manong Alcuaz, Joe Pascual, Joey Legarda, Victor Sumagaysay, Graciela Ancaja, Cornelius Cruz, Alva Galizo, Peter Chong, Jomarie Beato, Andres Celestino, Ben Bie, Joe Cool, Atty. AGA, Lorenzo Apuping, Manuel Espaldon.

Sigma Kappa Pi invites alumni and residents to join the 1st Raul Bartolome Memorial Cup at the Clark Golf & Country Club (Mimosa) on April 14. Friends from UP Barkada of fraternity alumni associations have signed up in a common effort to stop campus violence. For details, call John Pasamonte: 928-0156 or 929-1012.

YOUR BODY. Recent lab tests show that flavonoids, biological compounds found in more than 4,000 fruits and veggies, seem to inhibit growth of human cancer cells. Preliminary findings were presented by KGK Synergize Inc. Thursday to the national meeting in San Francisco of the American Chemical Society.

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