Joey & Alma break up /18 senators & Estrada

It’s a day after the nation’s love-in with Cupid. No matter. It’s a good excuse for getting out of politics, reminding me of a day in May 1989 when in the Pacifica Country residence of Ken and Lupita Kashiwahara, the ever irrepressible sister of Ninoy Aquino, sprang on me: "Teddy, haven’t you heard? Now it’s official!" As I recall, nothing spectacular could have escaped me when it came to the ever shifting tides of Philippines politics. I had just arrived from Manila, so whatinell was Lupita so excited about?

"Dolphy!" she exclaimed. "Dolphy is now here in Las Vegas with Zsa Zsa Padilla. His separation from Alma Moreno is now official. Well, it’s now finally in the open!" Ah, Dolphy! Everything, it seems, originates from this buccaneer of the boudoir. And it was Dolphy that first came to mind when news broke out that – sniff, sniff and boo-hoo-hoo – Alma and Parañaque mayor Joey Marquez had split, ending a torrid love affair and marriage of 13 years. And three children. A record, mind you, for romance and I do’s in the movie industry where two years nowadays is considered exemplary ecstasy in the love pit from pole to pole.

No, we won’t get into that stuff as to who was to blame. For that, we shall just quote La Rochefoucault, the French bard of the throbbing heart, who said: "At the beginning and at the end of love, the lovers find themselves alone." And we might add, it was also in France where love as we know it today began during the Middle Ages when chivalry bloomed into flower. Remember the troubadours who traveled the entire length of the land singing the first lyrics of romantic love between a man and a woman? Remember the halberded knights on whose lances were hang the perfumed handkerchiefs of their lady love? Remember the Songs of Roland? In all Europe, these songs were heard. And eventually they shattered the tradition of arranged marriages and gave way to Shakespeare’s "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when its alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove…If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ and no man ever loved."

Shakespeare was wrong when in a fit of minstrel passion, he wrote: "Love is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken."

Well, after 13 years it was shaken. Joey broke into tears. And so did Alma. The difference was that, on the surface, in his pubic statements, Joey remains smitten, wants to reconcile, avows he is still very much in love with La Alma. For her part, Ness (What a lyrical nickname) swings the pendulum from heartache to hot tamale, crying one minute, then dancing and shaking voluptuously the next as she is back in the entertainment business. He is still handsome. She is still drop-dead lovely.

And media, particularly TV and radio, bleeds the split-up for all its worth. It’s Romeo and Juliet cracking apart. Tristan and Isolde. Heloise and Abelard. Anthony and Cleopatra, Snow White and her Prince Charming.

Both are probably losers in this Cupid clambake in reverse.

But the bigger loser could be Joey Marquez. His political career careens in the balance like a billiard ball rolling awkwardly off-course. How can he now aspire for the Senate in 2004? And neither, it seems, can Alma aspire for the mayoralty of Parañaque. That was the scenario. Ralph Recto and Francis Pangilinan won their Senate seats because they shafted the hearts of Sharon Cuneta and Vilma Santos, had them on stage during the campaign, cooing, billing, making most of the caress of love, a whisper, eyes in mutual adoration, and its torrent of passion, a poetry of bodies locked into each other while the fireplace blazes in the night.

Let me recount to you how I first met Joey Marquez and Alma Moreno. I was waiting for my car at the lobby front of the Philippine Plaza Hotel early in 1991. I remember that very vividly because that same afternoon, in conversation with friends, I raised the issue of Joey Marquez as a mayoralty candidate of Parañaque where I have resided since 1974. To me, the idea of Joey, a quirky, quacky TV comedian (Abangan ang Susunod na Kabanata with Richard Gomez) was just preposterous, unacceptable. Politically, I mused, Joey was a certified half-wit who had no more right to rule Parañaque than Marquis de Sade setting up a Trappist monastery.

Toting him was the old Pol Luigi Santos, formerly head of the DILG under President Cory Aquino, and a high priest of Laban. Well, whaddayouknow. But there was Luigi suddenly in front of me beaming, as he always does, this grand archduke then of Philippine politics. Even before Luigi could say anything outside of "Hi, Teddy," I gave him in spades, in language bodacious and acrimonious. Whereinell did he get the gall to sic Joey Marquez on Parañaque? I was sore. Out came a stream of vituperation against Joey, his id, his ego, his libido.

Gahd, I could have frozen and I did. Right behind Luigi – terribilu dictu! – was Joey, who heard everything I said and who if he were in his right mind would have fetched me a steaming uppercut on the chops. But no, Joey was grinning at me from ear to ear in that Pal Joey smile of his, and you know how the guy smiles, even the molars show. What he said next floored me: "Mr. Benigno, I would be honored and very happy if you could guest me on Firing Line." Bam! The next bam! Was even more hypodermic. Until then Alma Moreno in front of me was invisible. She strode forward. She too heard everything. She too flashed me a big, big smile normally reserved by Penelope Cruz for Tom Cruise. "Yes, Mr. Benigno," she crooned, "pleased invite Joey to Firing Line, you will find him very interesting, pangako ko iyan."

In a word – something that rarely happens to me – I was floored. I muttered something about calling them later by phone. I never did. Firing Line, which was co-hosted by Oscar Orbos, had then lined up all the presidential candidates in what we expected to be – and was – a big, superb television spectacular. Joey Marquez just didn’t fit into our format.

But he won the mayoralty of Parañaque, a beatific La Ultima Alma at his side. They sashayed into City Hall as much earlier Ferdinand and Imelda sashayed into Malacañang, Malakas and Maganda swirling from the mists of time to extend their dominion over the Philippines. Outside the presidential couple in Malacañang, Joey and Alma were probably the most talked about political couple. They had sex oozing out. They had good looks and flair. They had movie oomph. They were hated by the elite, adored by the Great Unwashed. And let me tell you this. When I laid eyes on Alma for the first time in front of Philippine Plaza, I never realized how gorgeous she was, even without make-up. She was gamin and gadabout, angel face and Venus face, perched on a body that had all the lure of Lolita. No wonder Dolphy fell for her like a ton of bricks. She could dance. She could sing. She probably did wonders in the hay. But helas, everything has an end.

Ah, as the song goes: "Et la mer efface sur les sables les pas des amants désunis." And the sea effaces on the sands the footprints of separated lovers.

* * *

Now back to politics, and I am mad. Eighteen senators, probably more, have signed a resolution urging Malacañang to allow deposed and disgraced president Joseph Estrada to travel to the United States for knee surgery. As I have repeatedly said in this space, our Senate today takes the cake for political perfidy, a squalid bunch of political opportunists who wouldn’t recognize St. Peter even if they met in a telephone booth. The rationale for the resolution would have been perfectly understandable if it were signed only by senators belonging to the Puwersa ng Masa. The resolution, authored by Blas Ople, stated that outside of its humane considerations, Estrada would not seek escape and sanctuary in America "as it will blacken his name." Additionally, "flight will suggest guilt and jeopardize his chances in the trial."

Baloney to all that. The guy wants to flee. Estrada is a felon just like any other felon jailed during trial, like Romeo Jalosjos. In fact, he is getting VIP treatment. Spared the humility of real jail with prison bars and grim walls, he is detained at the Veterans Memorial Hospital whose presidential suite has all the comforts and amenities of upperclass living. There is no stink of laid-over urine as in prison, no neighbor or co-inmates with lurid tattoos all over their bodies, no sex-starved gorillas who would probably seek to assault him from the rear, no prison yards where criminals of every sort at times get into fatal rumbles, the leer of the devil in their faces. Hell, they even had a swanky and swinging Christmas party in this suite, with Erap as Santa Claus proffering gifts to one and all.

The resolution, already a no-no, further gets into my craw because Senate majority leader Loren Legarda has signed it. Never mind minority leader Aquilino (Nene) Pimentel, a knight-errant of Estrada’s Sige-Sige political gang. Another consideration is that the jailed Ninoy Aquino was allowed by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos to go to the US for a heart bypass during the height of martial rule. I find that grossly insulting. Ninoy was and is a national hero, who chose imprisonment, isolation and even death rather then bend the knee to Mr. Marcos. Critics consider Estrada’s a debauch and a lecher, who forged the name Jose Velarde to pillage – according to the plunder charges – the national till in the hundreds of millions.

Hell, no. I have talked with some of the best Filipino orthopedic surgeons. And they tell me, they can perform surgery on Estrada’s knees with the same skills and state-of-the-art medical tools and instruments as you can find in America. As far as Loren Legarda is concerned, I am very sorry, she has fallen from my pedestal. I tell you, that Senate is a swineherd.