Running neck and neck with GMA in the SWS poll is bad news for FPJ

I don’t know why they chose April Fools’ Day (yesterday) to reveal the results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey. In this case, it’s not good news for challenger Fernando Poe, Jr.

The SWS puts Panday only slightly ahead of La Presidenta by giving him a 34.9 percent rating against La Gloria’s 32.9 percent in a survey conducted between March 11 to 19 – 39 days into the campaign. Given the margin of error of 2.2 percent, this means that FPJ and GMA are running neck and neck.

With just 38 days to go before the May 10 election, we’re halfway into the fight – and Da King isn’t pulling ahead of La Emperadora. The KNP Opposition will, of course, howl that the SWS has been "fixed" to prepare the minds of the public for the massive "cheating" intended by the Administration. What happened to the accusation that Mr. Mahar Mangahas, the SWS’ chief, is the first cousin of FPJ by the Kelley sisters’ side? Evidently blood is not thicker than water, then. Or else, the SWS survey is credible.

The word on the street is that FPJ needs five million votes over the President to win in May. Do those rumor-pundits mean to say that the Commission on Elections will "gift" GMA with three to four million ghost ballots, even without those wonderful automatic counting machines? Fie on them! GMA cheat? Gee whiz.

The Comelec, though, is acting very suspiciously. Aside from the two clumsy Commissioners that the President appointed, but who were rebuffed by the Supreme Court, the Comelec seems to have distributed only 2.5 million voter’s IDs out of a list of about 38 million registered voters.

What’s worse, a story in yesterday’s newspapers alleges that the Commission’s data-collecting machines managed to record only 16 million out of the expected 38 million during the "computerized" re-registration, and the validation period from August to December last year. What does this imply? Will those who were not recorded as having been "re-registered" be allowed to vote? Chairman Ben Abalos, who even scheduled a Mass for clean voting (it’s not up to God, it’s up to the Comelec, Ben!), had better explain this pronto. Many voters are incensed by not having been re-registered owing to Comelec muddle and confusion.

As for the non-delivered voters’ ID cards, I can attest to this personally. As Chairman of the Tuesday Club which meets weekly in the EDSA Plaza Shangri-La Hotel – our membership includes Ben Abalos of Comelec himself, as well as publishers, editors, columnists, mayors, senators, congressmen, including Mandaluyong Mayor Ben Hur Abalos, Jr., businessmen, communications executives, lawyers and assorted rascals addicted to coffee and conversation – I can announce that our Club is very disappointed.

Chairman Abalos brought over all his hi-falutin’ equipment, digital photo machines, laser fingerprinting stuff (look, Ma, no indelible ink!) and his head staffers to photograph, fingerprint, and register no less than 40 members for their voter’s IDs. This was last November, or almost five months ago!

We’ve not received our voter’s ID cards yet. Susmario-sep. Some Club members are grumbling that they might discover they voted already – by mental telepathy.

As for our friend, FPJ, he’d better look to his own pangkat. His juggernaut seems to be losing steam and running out of fuel. If he doesn’t show he’s a "winner" within the next ten days, the much-needed additional funding won’t get to him. Especially if people begin to think that FPJ, their idolized "champion", is being jerked around by a cordon sanitaire called the ASO Gang. This is not GMA "black propaganda". Panday’s own agonized supporters are the ones saying it. GMA’s bully boys, of course, must be laughing themselves sick.

In the final, Oscar-winning epic of the Lord of the Rings, the young King Aragon, heir to the crown of Gondor, rides to recover and defend his kingdom and save humanity from the Dark Forces, unsheathing Andruril, a magic Sword Reforged named The Flame of the West. Brandishing it, Aragorn gallops against the encircling ranks of the Evil Orcs, a monstrous and powerful host, prompting his dismayed and outnumbered followers to also raise their swords and plunge into the fray. The power of the devilish One Ring is broken by Frodo the Hobbit ascending Mount Doom, and, against all odds, helped by the courage of his friend, Samwise Gamgee, hurling it to dissolve into the boiling lava of the Crack of Doom. Thus is accomplished, in an explosion of flame and crumbling walls, The Return of the King.

Where is FPJ’s "sword"? Are his followers growing more militant, brave, and strong owing to his leadership? Or are they in disarray? He must rekindle their loyalty to Da King before he can triumph over . . . oops, I didn’t intend to refer to La Emperadora’s K-4 as the Evil Forces. But at this moment, they’ve got the upper hand.

You don’t need Tolkien to tell you that.

The news that four Turkish "Arabic teachers" have been arrested in Cotabato City for alleged ties with the terrorist Jemaah Islamiyah will be greeted by the usual cries of protest and testimonials to the "innocence" of the four from Istanbul – who, by the way, acquired Filipino wives, all Muslim of course.

The four Turks, aged between 29 and 34, had been working as instructors in Arabic at the Eeman Institute, a private school owned by a Cotabato-based government official, Zamzamin Ampatuan.

Interestingly, Ampatuan – who decried the arrest of the four by Immigration officers with arrest warrants – is the executive director of President GMA’s Office of Muslim Affairs. Well, well. Right inside the matrix of government.

Those four Turkish "missionaries", or whatever they are, might be blameless, but when Warrants of Arrest are issued, they cannot be taken lightly.

As is axiomatic in a saying that long antedated the Islamic threat of al-Qaeda and JI, or the Abu Sayyaf and MILF, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Remember that in the United States for many decades, the criminal Mafia had better lawyers and "bought" judges than the Federal or State Governments. Democracies are subverted by crooks and subversives utilizing the very instruments of liberty and democracy that peaceful citizens uphold.

So let’s investigate those four Turkish Delights very carefully. Remember that it was in Istanbul that the British Consulate (with the Consul-General himself blown up) and two Jewish synagogues – in terror bombings that killed more Turks than heathen, i.e., Christians – were so terribly devastated. Fundamentalist fanaticism and Islamic jihad have overwhelmed the once-tolerant secular nation of the great Mustaphaa Kemal Ataturk, one of my boyhood idols. This is a cruel world in which preachers of hatred have embittered the relationship between Muslims and Christians, reminding Islam of the centuries of ruthless confrontation and clash between the two great religions which proclaim "peace".

Would you believe? In next-door Indonesia, where most of the 200 million Indonesians are Muslims, the "National Awakening Party" of Indonesia’s former President, Abdurrahman Wahid – affectionately dubbed "Gus Dur" – has angrily accused two rival Islamic parties of circulating a slanderous video of ex-President Gus Dur being "baptized" by a Christian priest! With vital parliamentary elections scheduled next Monday, it seems that the two competing aggregations, the "Prosperous Justice Party" and "National Mandate Party" decided to fight dirty and circulate a video of Wahid being blessed by a priest. Wahid’s partymates admit such a video exists, but declare that Gus Dur was just being "thanked" by the Christians after giving a speech on the need for Indonesian Muslims to be tolerant of other Faiths!

What a world we live in! For a Muslim leader to be seen with a Christian priest has now become . . . a crime? Or a political kiss of death? Sanamagan. Need we say more?