Well, well, well.
This had been done before. I will not mention names because this would be hugely embarrassing. I was in a room years ago where some of the biggest prominentoes of Philipine politics were present when Joseph Ejercito Estrada was still vice president. The assembled grandees were looking – groping is the better word – for somebody who could be president after Fidel Valdez Ramos. Since none of them enjoyed any kind of mass popularity, they were out of the presidential circuit. FVR was constitutionally limited to six years. So he had to drop out.
Soon the name of Erap Estrada was mentioned. Why not? Somebody said. Why not? Another mentioned. Yes, why not? Somebody else repeated.
A lady ventured that Erap Estrada was more of a follower than a leader, a "sunod-sunuran" who didn’t have much brains and would do anything the group wanted him to do. Ergo, their party would keep. So would the powers-that-be in that party. Estrada was vastly popular, a space ship, a rocket booster, a meteor whose very presence anywhere in the Philippines would attract the multitude. The yokels idolized him. The man had magic. So why not Estrada?
His only possible rivals were then Senate President EdgardoAngara and Sen. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Edong Angara had the party, the network, the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino, a holdover from the yon and radiant years when Ninoy was its overarching icon. GMA had the popularity, almost matching that of Erap, but she had no party. Eventually she slid from presidentiable to the vice presidential teammate of Lakas presidential candidate Jose de Venecia.
Now that you look back, this was where all her political troubles began. For that matter, all our present political troubles. But that is another story. Remember? In 1998 Estrada triumphed in the presidential elelctions. So did GMA as vice president. Both belonged to different parties.
Ed Angara was actually the first known political mentor of Erap Estrada. But even he too succumbed to the populist magic of Erap. It was Sen. Ernie Maceda who brokered the Estrada-Angara presidential tandem. Estrada easily clobbered Joe de V for the presidency and there – right there – Philippine politics switched to the pageantry of big-time movie "heroes" as presidents.
Now we are getting warmer. Enter FPJ.
Everybody was agreed from the beginning that Erap didn’t have what it takes to be president. No problem. He would be given the best counsel, the best advisers, a consiglieri that would match anything the House of Savoy could conceive. Pretty soon, Titoy Pardo was at his side, and from the business community came Washington Sycip, the Zobels, the Ayalas, always a Concepcion, and the assorted and vaunted economic wizards, all gradautes of the UP School of Economics. Erap Estrada couldn’t want for more.
But did that work? The hell it didn’t.
I was then host of Firing Line and posthaste organized "The Night of the Presidentiables" early 1998. I made sure, through the help of Rod Reyes, that Estrada would participate. So did Renato de Villa, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Lito Osmeña, Raul Roco. Erap of course was the main event. A nationwide TV audience awaited his every utterance, his every gesture, his every essay into the world of presidential politics. Firing Line was the premier political talk show at the time.
Well? Let me scoot to the point. Estrada flunked for all the homework, all the studies, all the cramming he did.
His advisers presumably forgot to instruct him on the G word at the time – globalization. When I asked him how he understood globalization, he fidgeted, he squiggled, he fretted. Then the words came out. They had nothing to do at all with globalization. They had to do with credit, with some banking practices, with a dumb, esoteric thing or two about finance. This is what he remembered from his cramming. And this is what he said – gibberish.
Embarassing? Of course yes. Discombobulating? Certainly. Disastrous? Not at all.
Maybe if I were one on one with Erap Estrada, just host and guest, I could have pushed the envelope. And he would have been stripped stark naked without a fig leaf. But would this have made a difference? I don’t know. I am sure he would still have been elected president May 1998 and with a big margin. The masses adored him, right or wrong.
FPJ is following on the same path now. And I also figure that despite the cavalcade of hired counsel to instruct him on economic, political and financial issues, he will not fare any better than Estrada. In fact, he could fare worse. Estrada was an entertainer. FPJ is not. Estrada was immersed in politics, from mayor, to senator, to vice president, to president. FPJ doesn’t even have any inkling of what politics is about.
Inevitably, nothing from his learned and erudite council of advisers really got to Estrada. As, similarly, no matter how they try, nothing will get to FPJ. It takes a lifetime, or half a lifetime, of education, or self-study, of immersion in knowledge, of intellectual curiosity, of devouring books, reading magazines, newspapers, assorted publictions, touching constant base with learned people, yes, consulting and converssing with the Muses, to ever achieve the level of learning that can prepare one for the presidency.
If you have no formal schooling, yes a high school dropout, but you are Diderot (17l3-l784), son of a cutler, who lived like a pauper as a publisher’s hack, a coffeehouse frequenter in Paris, but who struck an intimate friendship with the great philosopher Jean Jacquess Rousseau, and learned and learned and learned, then yes, you can aspire for the presidency. Diderot it was who launched the first Encyclopedia, a great opus of the Age of the Enlightenment.
Blas Ople was a college dropout. And so were some journalists who made it in the world of journalism. But Ka Blas was a bookworm, who stormed into every book with the zeal of a frontiersman, and he could hold his own with almost anybody. The dictator Ferdinand Marcos listened to him with rapt atttention. I have no information at all that FPJ was ever interested in books, in assiduous learning. Did he ever frequent book stores? Did he ever read from a book of poetry?
If elected president, how would FPJ react and behave during press conferences? When confronted by world media? When attending international conclaves? When surrounded by his peers the world over, and they know what they are talking about in wide open debates and discussions, and he doesn’t? This was what GMA wsas intimating when she said the Philippines in such circumstances would be "the world’s laughingstock".
Thus I can understand why FPJ is now avoiding participation in the scheduled presidential debates sponsored by the Philippine Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting and ABC-5. He needs it like he needs six holes in the head.
Not all the king’s horses and all the King’s men can come to his rescue, not all his assorted advisers, described by Rep. Francis Escudero, Poe’s spokesperson, as "the most potent group of economists and planners that can be formed." Criminy, they are?
Raul Roco will win this debate hands down. This is the moment he has been waiting for. I am surprised that GMA has agreed to join. In 1998 when still a presidential candidate, she was plumb scared of meeting Roco in open debate. Now she probably feels she has accumulated enough experience to engage Raul Roco mano a mano in a nationally televised encounter.
But not FPJ. And I suppose I can’t blame him at all. It would be like a rabbit squaring off with a polar bear. Roco would demolish him. FPJ will only agree on his conditions. The first is that there be no television coverage. The second is that it be held in some remote village or town where the FPJ booboisie and anthropoidae will drown out Roco.
Some debate.