Behold, the elections! / Bro. Eddie phenomenon

The hysterical hoopla is almost over, namely the Philippine presidential elections. Now the counting is apace. And here’s where the real excitement or whatever begins, a mad throbbing of the clock for about a week or more until the final or official results are known. This column long ago stuck its neck out and forecast the triumph of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo by about seven to eight percentage points. We said – even as we didn’t like her at all – she would pull away from her nearest rival, Fernando Poe Jr.

That is what is happening so far in the tedious manual counting, courtesy of a Comelec whose body weight is only tallied from the neck down.

Several early counts, largely for NCR, with not even one per cent of the votes tabulated, have GMA way out in front with 31 per cent, FPJ 23, Panfilo Lacson 20, Raul Roco 10, Brother Eddie Villanueva 8. The so-called undecided vote of about 22-24 percent didn’t matter in the end. They were probably dispersed, went in bloc to nobody in particular. Surprise, surprise, there was no big surprise. Except possibly Loren Legarda currently slitting the throat of Noli de Castro.

If surprise there was, it was the sustained passion of Filipinos for presidential elections. I had thought by this time the citizenry had learned its lesson. And this lesson was that these elections were our greatest, grandest, costliest folly, much ado about nothing really. We have had these elections since 1946. And after each election, the nation looked like an alley cat run over by a carretela, badly mauled and whimpering for dear life.

We never really learn.

I thought I was one of the few lost souls in media, baying against the moon. The scenery ahead of me after these elections looked like a train wreck. Many if not all of our problems had already sunk to Ground Zero. Our economy had virtually been scraped clean as foreign and local investors avoided it like the plague. Graft and corruption had soared to an all-time high, as did crime and violence. The national deficit had mounted to astronomical proportions, as did a population of 84 million.

The International Herald Tribune (actually The New York Times) didn’t need to look far.

In a three-column front-page article three days ago, the headline alone (The Philippines, Seeing No Evil) was a knife in our throat. The story reported that the presidential candidates simply ignored the issues that had brought us to perdition and "chose to entertain rather than to discuss. The Filipino electorate hardly had a glimpse of these problems."

Glimpse? They didn’t care a hoot. What drove them to raw and ribald ecstasy were the movie and entertainment celebrities accompanying the candidates, the Mardi Gras atmosphere. Even the candidates made fools of themselves by dancing, singing, expostulating and grimacing like clowns, hamming it up in the tradition of the legendary Joe E. Brown who had the biggest, bawdiest mouth of all time.

Looking at all these, The International Herald Tribune editorially hinted if indeed we were a nation or a drunken stumblebum headed for Asia’s scrap heap.

If the best cannot come anymore in our democratic Philippines, what then will come? I will say, tongue in cheek, the worst is yet to come. Tell you what I think. There is grumbling in the opposition ranks. Already, the FPJ forces are disgruntled. Many are beginning to believe they have been cheated by Malacañang. Trimmed. Jobbed. Rolled. Creamed in broad daylight.

The cheating, they say, happened long ago. There’s a story that goes that five million spurious ballots are now waiting in the wings, ready to be sprung by Malacañang when the time comes. Believe or not believe? The graves all over the country have come alive. The long dead did come out and vote. Believe? Yes, believe.

But the charge that has really caught fire is that GMA has allegedly rifled every government chest containing money, every possible source of goodies and benefits to be given to the poor (FPJ’s bailiwick). They count these in the tens of billions. This is largely why, they reason out, many of the poor have deserted FPJ‚s ranks, and line up like Raggedy Ann to get their pabaon from a GMA grinning from ear to ear.

Money, money, money. Goodies, goodies, goodies.

Apologists of GMA reason there is nothing wrong here. She is helping the poor and what’s wrong with that? Critics of GMA maintain that is outright cheating, fraudulent misuse of government funds, a rank, filthy impeachable offense. And yet, she cannot be impeached now. Will the FPJ forces, when eventually convinced they have been jobbed, bolt to the streets and angrily demonstrate by the tens of thousands? Flinging a third finger left hand in the direction of Malacañang?

And if they do, what will the military and the police do?

Whatever happens, what will the overflowing gospel hordes of Brother Eddie Villanueva do? They too will come to believe they have been flagrantly cheated. Will they stream to Luneta again? Will their yellow T-shirts be their coat of arms, their Brother Eddie! cries raised to the zeal of Armageddon? Isn’t it that hell hath no fury like a successful spiritual movement spat upon and scorned?. Again, what will the military and the police do?

Mynheers, I raise these matters for they have to be raised. Whatever GMA says in victory, however Cory Aquino may have succeeded in summoning the presidential candidates to purposeful prayer in San Agustin Church, the truth is this. Or close to this.

The Philippines is not the same Philippines anymore. If there is terror, it is the politicians terrorizing the populace. An unprecedented critical mass is forming. The nation has been so abused, so bloodied, so battered, so cut up like beef in the slaughterhouse, so exploited, so robbed and rifled that I am afraid elections, like the ones we have, will no longer serve the purpose.

Our leaders, our politicians, our businessmen, our august lords and ladies of the realm have been so mean and wicked, so greedy, so uncaring, so up-your-bloody-ass oriented, so power-mad, so boozy, so wrapped up in the madcap merry roll of the golden coin, so intoxicated by the Golden Teat, they couldn’t care less, or are so unprepared for the possibility the nation might explode in their faces.

After all, after every election, this nation of ours just muddled on.

Really? We’ll see.

* * *

Brother Eddie Villanueva deserves another look-see. Of all the presidential candidates, he came out the most sincere, the most deserving, the most articulate, the most perceptive, the most endearing. What was more, he brought out the biggest crowds. The 3.5 million followers that attended his miting de avance last week will probably have to land in the Guinness Book of World records as the biggest political rally ever.

It was a smash that crowd, a lulu, a gas, an incredible spread of people like sands on the shore reaching all the way to Taft Avenue.

They came from every sector of society, and, by golly, they came because they believed in Brother Eddie. They brought their own food, bought their own yellow T-shirts, their own rally paraphernalia, shouted themselves hoarse in praise of this – to me – strange and mysterious preacher who heads the Jesus is Lord (JIL) group.

I have seen no Pied Piper like him. Not Bro. Mike Velarde of El Shaddai, not Bro. Erdie Manalo of Iglesia ni Cristo, could pipe in this kind of a crowd in their salad days. Not even a visiting pope. Pope John Paul II in an open Luneta Mass several years ago flushed out two million from their homes. It was said then there were no crimes in Metro Manila then because all the police – maybe even all the gangsters – attended that Mass.

How decipher Brother Eddie?

He is a preacher, dreamer, charmer, budding politician, an honest one, all rolled into one. Try as you will, there is nothing fake in the man. I am seldom entranced by anybody, Filipino or foreigner, but at one dinner at a friend’s residence, a fund-raising dinner, he had me bobbing like a bird on a tender branch, and I told him afterwards: "Hey, Brother Eddie, you scare me, where do you get your magic?"