Unsettled

With only a few days to go before the deadline for candidates in the national elections to register their candidacies, everything seems unsettled.

There is something very peculiar about this presidential campaign. In the past, conventions were held in November and the contending tickets were formed in early December. This time, no conventions have been held. No selection process was conducted in any effective manner. Individual candidates have simply postured, played for ratings in the voter preference polls and parlayed little advantages to produce the semblance of an electoral machine.

The self-designated "united opposition" seems far from being united. The factions of Edgardo Angara and Agapito Aquino have expelled each other from the LDP. Each faction is now pestering the Comelec to accredit one at the expense of the other.

Secondary candidates Raul Roco and Panfilo Lacson are still frantically scouting around for running-mates. Their senatorial tickets remain half-filled. Names of potential senatorial candidates were floated, but later denied. I saw Baby Arenas the other night and she professed great surprised at being named one of Lacson’s supposed senatorial bets.

At the moment, it seems that the minor political camps are waiting from crumbs to drop from the major political formations.

It was reported that the camp of Roco has been sending feelers to Sen. Robert Barbers for the latter to run as vice-presidential candidate on their ticket in the event the senator is not picked by President Gloria as her running-mate. Defeated vice-presidential candidate Lito Osmeña of the Promdi turned down Roco’s offer to be vice-presidential bet once more.

Likewise, the camp of Lacson has been wooing Bayani Fernando as their vice-presidential candidate in case the MMDA chairman is not picked by the President for her ticket. Fernando, it seems, would rather gun for a seat in the Senate in the event he fails to make it to the vice-presidential slot.

The same scavenging from the President’s table seems to be going on at the level of senatorial candidates. The Lakas-CMD is overpopulated with candidates. The minor factions are waiting for the crumbs that would drop off from that table.

That is a dangerous game to play. It leaves the minor factions only with rejects whose desperate ambitiousness forces them to turncoat at the eleventh hour. It makes the minor factions vulnerable to frantic last-minute adjustments if the ruling party holds out to the last moment before final choices are made.

But, short on personnel and logistics, and with flagging survey ratings, the two secondary presidential contenders have no choice but to court the dangers of scavenging.

The situation is not helped by open-ended reconciliation efforts in the grossly misnamed "united opposition." As of this writing, both the Lacson and the FPJ camps continue to keep the option of an Estrada-brokered deal open.

With that option still open, major players are disinclined to openly throw their support behind either camp. If, for instance, Lacson withdraws in a deal brokered by Estrada, the politicians in his camp will be left in a lurch – and eventually on the margins since their have bitterly burned their bridges with their erstwhile comrades in the pro-Estrada bloc.

I don’t see, for instance, Edgardo Angara welcoming Agapito Aquino back to camp with a warm embrace. That is simply contrary to character. Rep. Carlos Padilla, who is supposed to anchor Lacson’s senatorial ticket, will be left out in the political desert to wilt.

On Monday, FPJ is due to file his certificate of candidacy first thing in the morning. This does not mean, however, that his campaign is a settled matter.

According to insiders, there are three contending factions in the FPJ camp: the non-descript bloc of fans who collected the signatures to convince the screen idol to run; the bloc of hardened politicians led by Angara and Enrile; and the pro-Estrada camp led by former Agrarian Reform Secretary Horacio Morales.

So far, FPJ has very carefully avoided being seen with the trapos of the Estrada and Angara blocs. He did not materialize when the so-called Kilusan ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (KNP) nominated him in some hastily organized affair at an expensive hotel ballroom. When he did accept the draft, FPJ surrounded himself with the nameless and faceless fans of the so-called "signature campaign."

It is rumored that Estrada has been slighted by the fact that his buddy FPJ made his moves without consultation with the jailed former president. And while ambitious politicians have trooped to Estrada’s detention quarters to seek his blessings – and his brokerage – there is no indication that the former president has been able to contact the reclusive FPJ at all. An FPJ spokesman said that the actor has not talked to his friend in five months.

Meanwhile, the Angara faction has proceeded to assemble a senatorial slate that seems to have been woven in a retirees’ home. At the core of that slate are the staunch pro-Estrada senators during the impeachment crisis: Juan Ponce Enrile, Francisco Tatad, Miriam Santiago, John Osmeña and Ernesto Maceda.

FPJ faces a serious dilemma. If he sticks too closely to the Estrada and Angara factions, he will be perceived as a dummy of crafty politicians dislodged by Edsa Dos and craving to claw back to power. If he becomes too independent of them, he will not benefit from their finances and machineries.

But FPJ does not have his own political core group capable of cobbling together a nationwide alliance on the actor’s own terms and consistent with the image he is trying to project: that of a non-politician pressed to the political arena by popular clamor.

At some point, he will have to contradict that image and stand on the same stage of political has-beens and power-players that ought to have been jailed long ago. It is a moment that FPJ might want to postpone as long as possible because it will cut deeply and painfully into his own disposition and on the credibility of his message.

But it is a moment he cannot avoid for too long.

His very candidacy has become conceivable only because of the efforts of the pro-Estrada politicians to polarize the situation, sharpen the options and open a way for them to grab back power and influence. They set the stage for Poe to mount. Regardless of how FPJ might want to imagine his new political role, he cannot banish the trapos from his yard. He cannot extract his candidacy from those who have established their political careers pandering to populism in order to serve vested interests.

Each night, I am sure, Ronnie Poe lies in bed wondering if these trapos will deliver for him – or will simply exploit his magic for their own unscrupulous ends.

And each morning he meets with his ill-qualified little army of fans to prepare for a major battle, a battle he will have to fight without his friend Erap who, at presstime, seems bent on scurrying away to fix his tortured knee.