Now it can be told / No-El still possible

The Supreme Court’s perceived shift from certain disqualification of Fernando Poe Jr. to eventually rolling out the red carpet for him on the smoking citizenship issue has the smack of a Hollywood thriller. The truth or rather the reality was that the Supreme Court was determined and decided to lower the boom on FPJ more than a month ago. Crush him. A disqualification – I was told by impeachable Court sources – would be abundantly bolstered by law and legal precedence and at least eight justices had lined up to lower the boom on FPJ.

The die was cast. FPJ had to be legally burned at the stake. He was Da King in the movie but an unqualified reject in presidential elections, an outcast in civil society. The justification was that he was not a natural-born Filipino. And so the Supreme Court decided at the time to stone FPJ to death.

I was privy to this decision. At the time I swore by it.

Its logic was that the FPJ bandwagon had to be stopped for several reasons – at all costs. He had absolutely no qualifications for the presidency. He reportedly belonged to the "no speak, no write, no think" species, a monumental embarrassment for all time. If elected, FPJ would destroy the country. He was the bravest man in the movies but a cringing milksop in public life. FPJ recoiled at having to recite the Roman alphabet backward and forward. He could not recite the first quatrain of Jose Rizal’s Mi Ultimo Adios.

But there was another underlying reason. FPJ’s close-in advisers, his cordon sanitaire, his financial backers were reportedly men and women of utter disrepute, scum all of them, the grave-diggers of Philippine democracy who worked for the disreputable regimes of Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada. Never again! There was also concern Eduardo (Danding) Cojuangco, Marcos closest crony, was and remains the eminence grise of FPJ.

Remember: It was the "brat pack" of Mr. Cojuangco, the spearhead of his Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), which in the House blackened and battered the name of Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide. They almost impeached him were it not for the dissenting vote of Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. An FPJ victory May 10 could reignite the NPC vendetta against Justice Davide and bring the nation again to the edge of the cliff. This could not be allowed to happen.

And yet eventually the Supreme Court voted to acquit FPJ. Why? What brought about this amazing volte face?

I have put the pieces together of a series of inquiries I have undertaken since then. All from official sources. I gathered, initially, that Malacañang Palace at that precise time began to lose its fear of FPJ. Two secret surveys conducted by the bright boys of GMA revealed she was fast catching up with FPJ. If the trend continued, she could and would overtake him. She was virtually going great guns. Earlier, FPJ was about to roll up 40-45 percent of the vote even before he formally launched his campaign. Egad!

This was validated first by Pulse Asia of Prof. Felipe Miranda. His last survey showed that indeed GMA had caught up and now enjoyed a statistical tie for the lead. The public sneered at this, and for the first time the gentle, reputable professor was called names. It didn’t take long before Social Weather Stations under Mahar Mangahas, a rival survey organization, came up with virtually the same figures. GMA was now riding a rocket booster. Pepe Miranda was right. FPJ was beginning to swoon.

What, honestly and truly, was happening?

To begin, FJ started becoming his own worst enemy. Still unseen on the campaign trail, he was solid myth – invincible. He was the stuff of legend, Da King, whose physical exploits in the movies had almost everybody in thrall. And why not? He rode these movies for more than 30 years, and, more than anybody else, much more than his friend Erap Estrada, he was a white knight atop a white horse in the sky, sheathed in blinding light.

When finally seen, when finally taking to the electoral hustings without benefit of movie heraldy, without his directors and scriptwriters and his props, FPJ could only blubber nonsense in his beer mug. Sounds did come out, squiggles of phrases, torn scraps of sentences – all signifying a man who never really studied. This was no presidential candidate, but a wax mummy in the museum of Madame Tussaud. He was a high school dropout, facing a world he knew nothing about.

It was worse when he appeared on TV, FPJ’s behavior at best was that of a Buckingham Palace guard, stony-faced, blurting barrack yips when time came to change shifts. Yes, he did talk at some length, but this must have been memorized. Whoever convinced FPJ to run for the presidency deserves corporal punishment. The man is now obviously in great agony, sweating blood when accosted by media. But he deserves everything he is getting, the brickbats, the insults, the tears. FPJ could have refused, but he did not. And he was just as crazy as they were – and are.

The truth is that I pity him. Worse confounded, he will not, cannot win.

The time is fast coming, I suppose, when the FPJ forces will be hit in the head by a psychological cannonball. And this is when they realize the FPJ avalanche they thought they had will loosen and flake off. And they will surely lose the war. It’s just too much to inflict FPJ on society at large. Many who had earlier decided to vote for him will switch to GMA, or perhaps to Raul Roco and Brother Villanueva.

The FPJ forces, of course, will roundly blame GMA for their foundering hopes. And there is much to blame. Not in all my life as a journalist have I seen so many gilded, fully loaded wagons charge out of Malacañang. They are like the gold and silk caravans of old, back to the era of the Caesars spreading the booty of campaign, rendering unto their flock what is due the flock, and scattering myrrh and incense everywhere.

GMA in full combat is imposing and frightening.

She is full roar, full throttle, fighting her own real war for the first time, unceasing and unheeding, knowing only she has to win, monomaniacal in her pursuit of victory. If FPJ has to be fought, it has to be relentless and merciless. It will be like the wars of yore, like the Crusades or the Pelopponesian wars. The victor would be at the banquet table feasting on pheasant and towering grape while the vanquished’s head would be cut off and delivered to her in a container, to be fished out every now and then for all to see.

* * *

As a journalist and fancier of political wars and history, I have always said "politics is war". Winston Churchill did say this. And he was the 20th century’s "Last Lion". But political wars in the Philippines are different. Especially the current electoral war. Never has a sitting president been more vilified in words fit only for an orang-otan. And never either has the opposition been raked so venomously and viciously over the coals. And never too have I witnessed a political system called democracy so split, so splintered, so scattered as to erase any distinction between and among parties. Each party has its own generous share of ruffians, wretches and scoundrels, unmentionable and unconscionable. They should have been shot at the Luneta a long time ago.

Who really cares about issues? The third finger, left hand, is the ultimate political gesture. A plague on all your houses!

And yet who really knows? Right now, there is no doubt elections will be held. But tomorrow? And the day after tomorrow? The government’s huge yelp of achievement – announcing the arrest of four Aby Sayyaf terrorists reportedly on the verge of staging a Madrid-type series of bombings in Metro Manila – disturbs me no end. How come the four have not yet been presented to the public? Or brought to Malacañang for a glittering GMA photo op? In the past, even a lowly arrested pickpocket merited entry to the Palace and a photo-op with GMA.

In the past, the Abu Sayyaf confined their terrorist labors to Jolo. At a time the government has announced the Abus are on the verge of extinction with the capture of Robot and the death of Abu Sabaya, there is now the dramatic revelation they have shifted their operations to Metro Manila. Whaaat? They have become stronger, more menacing than ever? They would now bomb us to kingdom come? Right in our very lair?

Unless the government comes out with incontrovertible evidence that indeed 10 million Metro Manilans are in imminent danger, the whole thing sounds fishy to me. A pretense that could lead to No-El should No-El prove to be necessary? Maybe. And again maybe not. On TV just two nights ago, the new national security adviser, Secretary Bert Gonzales, announced terror, a new kind of terror, was abroad in the land, and we had better, all of us, watch out. Or else.

As I earlier said, the real terror resides in nihilistic flapjacks like him.