Ping’s early bid aimed at women

Not a few political watchers snickered at Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s too-early declaration this week of a 2004 presidential bid. Those who have no love lost for him say he just backfired the Opposition’s most effective line. Lacson’s Laban party has been scoring points twitting President Gloria Arroyo as doing nothing but prepare for a presidential run herself. Comes now an Opposition figure doing, hah, the very same thing. Lacson’s every act and utterance will now be treated with suspicion, if not derision, as politicking. Worse, analysts guffaw, he proclaimed it just as the country entered the long Yuletide season. The police general-turned-senator only opened himself to pestering by local pols out for a quick buck in Christmas wrappings.

Others are not about to dismiss Lacson as a political tyro. Human rights lawyers believe he deliberately made moves leading up to the big day. The launch of a liquor ad for television and a regular column in a tabloid were designed for high public visibility. The subsequent radio interview that he took on the assignments to earn "a little extra cash" was for emotional effect with melodrama fans. He then fired two broadsides at the Administration before the announcement: that anybody could beat Mrs. Arroyo in 2004, and that the Cabinet’s Million-Dollar Man is none other than Justice Secretary Hernando Perez. The activist-lawyers say that Lacson set the stage well. If Perez now pursues the Kuratong Baleleng multiple-murder rap against him, Lacson can cry political vendetta and harassment. Same with the tricommittee report that the Senate majority is about to release concerning his alleged kidnapping and drug trafficking while in the police service. A PNP officer who once was assigned to Lacson’s Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force agrees with the lawyers’ reading: "He needs to get rid of the heinous crime cases via public opinion. Winning the Presidency will be a bonus."

Yet Lacson does seem to take the presidential dream seriously. The day it hit the headlines, he tried to downplay it. He said his revelation to the Foreign Correspondents Association was not so much about his ambition than the new pact among Opposition leaders to field a common candidate for President. What Lacson did not bother to take back was an equally surprising pronouncement: that he would buck the decades-old government line of natural birth control. As he said, runaway population growth of 2.36 percent negates the country’s economic gains. The 4.5-percent GDP so far this year may be the highest in Southeast Asia, but it simply isn’t enough to feed all 80 million Filipinos. The senator said he wasn’t afraid of what the Catholic Church would say, since it is only one sector of society while the welfare of all is of primacy.

The Church hierarchy expectedly reacted with a statement that it would fight any attempt to promote contraceptives. Cardinal Jaime Sin, who probably won’t support Lacson anyway because the latter was aligned with Joseph Estrada whom the prelate had urged to resign at the height of EDSA-2, also took a dig. At a press briefing on the forthcoming WorldMeeting of Families in Manila, he warned Catholics against "dark forces" in the 2004 elections. But pro-choice groups are astir. While they are wary of Lacson’s tough-guy image projected in the TV ad – he shoots a pistol, then sips brandy with the gang – they are happy that the anti-pill policy will be open to public debate from now till the official campaign.

Taking on the Church was a calculated move. Lacson’s advisers, a mix of Estrada aides and mellowed radicals, probably assess as over-rated the Church’s ability to sway elections. After all, the bishops went against the Protestant Fidel Ramos in 1992, in vain. Sin even confessed six month later that he had voted for the man after all. They also preached against a womanizer-gambler-drunkard candidate in 1998, yet Estrada handily won. Lacson now moves a step further by taking the Chruch bull by the horn. In the process, he is courting the woman vote.

Women comprise half of the 35 million voters. Inspired by a choice of rhythm method or contraceptives, they probably would vote for Lacson. That leaves to be seen. But political watchers note that the senator does have a way of enchanting "the not-really-weaker sex." A female columnist narrates a recent noisy cocktail scene: "When Lacson strode in, the menfolk fell silent while many of the wives gushed unabashedly, including me."

The bid for women’s votes complements the tough-guy image that males prefer. In a land where criminals are often left unpunished and the few who do land in jail eventually manage to escape, heads of households are growing increasingly anxious about their family’s safety. Express kidnapping – with ransoms as low as P5,000 – has become as prevalent as cellphone snatching. The police has been unable to stem the tide. Many parents are beginning to feel that Kuratong-style summary execution is the only solution. It is this segment of the voting public which believes that, assuming Lacson did rub out the Kuratong kidnapping suspects, he did the right thing.

That, too, is against Church teaching, along with lethal injection for heinous-rime convicts. Priests will have to preach harder to convince voters about the "dark forces."

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Lacson’s declaration only reinforced what has been going on since early this year – premature campaigning. There’s a law against it, but the Comelec can do nothing. The technicality is such that a candidate formally becomes such only upon filing of certificate. And premature campaigning is illegal only in the week or so between the filing deadline and the official start of the campaign period. Thus, a public announcement of candidacy is ignored as a sly way of walking around loopholes. Even television ads are okay, if about brandy or a politician’s pet project, so long as he has not yet filed a certificate and does not directly exhort people to vote for him.

Two other "presidentiables" have gone ahead of Lacson: Laban head Edgardo Angara, and Aksyon Demokratiko chief Raul Roco. They already said they are ready for drafts as party standard bearer.

Two others insist on not thinking about it at the moment. Matinee idol Fernando Poe Jr., Estrada’s best friend and best bet for clemency in case of a plunder conviction, has said he prefers to stick to the movies. Yet an FPJ-for-President Movement has been going around public markets, recruiting volunteers. President Arroyo, the ruling Lakas party’s natural bet for 2004, is concentrating on basic services for the poor and economic reforms. Leadership success is what an incumbent always banks on.

Still, the political season is on. One can glean it from the words of politicians and the moves of administration appointees. Mrs. Arroyo’s dinner with the Lopezes who run Meralco, for instance, was lambasted by an Opposition senator as sinister, coming as it does right after the Supreme Court order to refund billion-peso utility overcharges. About 12 persons were in that dinner, and the senator had once said you can’t keep a secret in this small town. Yet off he went, yakking that Mrs. Arroyo just wangled a deal for the Lopezes’ giant ABS-CBN network to ensure her 2004 victory. No proof of that. In fact, the senator demanded that Mrs. Arroyo disclose the details of the meeting. But he scored media points just the same.

Meanwhile, the PNP brass has thrown to Mindanao and Bicol some 200 officers once assigned to Lacson’s PAOCTF or Estrada’s Presidential Anti-Crime Commission. Some of the officers probably owe fealty to them. Others just want to move on with their careers. But now the brass has made enemies of them all, idle at that in the new postings to volunteer for covert work for politicians. The brass didn’t even do homework. One of the reassigned officers has been a dead a long time; another, suspected of coup plotting, is recuperating in hospital from serious illness. And they thought they were scoring points for the appointing power in Malacañang?

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Catch Sapol ni Jarius Bondoc, Saturdays at 8 a.m., on DWIZ (882-AM).

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