'President Fernando Poe Jr.'

The revelations made at the recent Senate hearings about the massive cheating that allegedly happened in Mindanao during the 2004 presidential elections clearly tell us that this festering issue will not magically go away. In the midst of all the accusations and denials made by all sorts of characters coming out of the woodwork, we need to thresh out what is true and what is fiction. Filipinos need to find the truth if only to set the record straight and correct — or as some say — even rewrite history. There is a suggestion to create a body similar to the Warren Commission that investigated the JFK assassination to get to the bottom of the issue and ferret out the truth. Supporters of “Da King” are already saying that the portrait of Fernando Poe Jr. should be placed in the Reception Hall of Malacañang together with the other former presidents as the truly elected 14th President of the Republic of the Philippines. “He was the President we never had,” his best friend Erap would always tell us.

But to Susan Roces, the widow of FPJ, a posthumous award or any form of recognition is no longer important because all she wants now is for the truth to come out and prevent the same thing from ever happening again since the true will of the people was thwarted. “People simply lost their votes, but I have lost my reason to live,” Roces earlier remarked — perhaps similar to the sentiment of millions of poor Filipinos who voted for their idol, nurturing the hope that they would have had a better life under President Fernando Poe Jr.

As it turns out, even a Cabinet secretary now serving under P-Noy has been implicated in cheating allegations. Ging Deles — who served under GMA — has denied the accusations saying she was busy with the peace process in Mindanao at the time. But a former GMA Cabinet official is furious, claiming that Deles was tasked to oversee ARMM during the 2004 polls. “What peace process is she talking about? Peace process in the midst of the campaign period? That’s ridiculous!” said the irate former official.

At a dinner I hosted in my home for FPJ sometime before the 2004 presidential elections, Max Soliven was tasked to give some good advice to Da King. Max told the action king how he should conduct his campaign at the homestretch. FPJ patiently sat through the whole “lecture” (Max was his friend and neighbor). When it was over, FPJ looked at my good friend in the eye and simply said: “Max, I know I’m going to win. I could see it in the eyes of the people.” Fernando Poe Jr. must have died of a broken heart because he simply could not believe that he would lose — especially in a region where his popularity has become legend, with diehard fans shouting invectives and throwing objects at the silver screen whenever movie scenes would show him being mauled by villains.

What many find disgusting is that when such allegations of cheating in ARMM first came out, the intelligentsia and the elite turned a blind eye and chose to do nothing. This same indifference happened once before when people did not give credence to Miriam Santiago’s protests that she was allegedly cheated out of the presidency in 1992. The Makati Business Club was very vocal in thumbing down Poe’s candidacy, saying the election was not a beauty contest with the winner chosen based on popularity. More tellingly, the upper crust of society did not hide the fact that they could never accept another actor — a high school dropout at that — to become president again.

It was crystal clear they did not want another Joseph Estrada, in spite of the fact that Erap commanded the loyalty of millions of masa voters — the same ones who elected Estrada’s wife and son to the Senate despite the ex-president’s incarceration. As a matter of fact, there are some who believe that if Cory Aquino had not died, Joseph Estrada would have been president the second time around. Many political analysts traced the root of the problems we face today to the fact that we allowed the Constitution to be subverted in EDSA Dos. Some of the most vocal critics of GMA today had once clapped their hands in approval when she took over the presidency in a patently unconstitutional precedent that gave an opportunity for an unelected incumbent president to run and use the presidential powers for a fresh term. Clearly, this countered what the current Constitution wanted to avoid.

An oft-repeated saying, “the truth will set us free,” should be applied today more than ever. Even those who genuinely voted for GMA in 2004 will also want to find out what really happened and put closure to an issue that continues to polarize this nation, with the poor majority harboring deep-seated resentments against the well-heeled minority whom they believe almost always manages to subvert their will. And no matter how much the upper crust may deny it, they cannot also wash their hands off this issue knowing their actions were driven by self-preservation, afraid as they were of a masa-leaning presidency as what FPJ’s would probably have been.

Unfortunately, FPJ is gone and will never know the truth. We should not have the wisdom of hindsight but the wisdom of experience. The electoral process must be truly strengthened and it should leave very little room for cheating. We not only owe it to a good man like FPJ but ultimately  — we owe it to ourselves.

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