Selecting FPJ

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Selecting FPJ
Sunday, 12 14, 2003

Let me tell you: It wasn’t that easy. First was the series of meticulous, diligent and thorough deliberations.

Then came the protracted consultations with the stalwarts and decision-makers of the LDP, PDP-Laban and PMP. These parties – signatories of the Covenant for national Unity – had previously coalesced as the KNP (Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino) in order to put up a more cohesive opposition force in the May 2004 elections. With each party in the May 2004 elections. With each party vigorously backing its designated horse, the race, so to speak, was tightly run, until at the finish line only four were running: Sen. Honasan, Sen. Pimentel, Sen. Lacson and Fernando Poe Jr.

Faced with the obligation of having to choose one over the three others, the KNP nomination committee headed by former Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile spent several agonizing days in deciding who, finally, would be proclaimed the presidential standard-bearer of the KNP. Any one of the four – by all means qualified in his own right – was good presidential material, but there should only be one. What to do then? Assuming that all other political considerations were equal among the contenders, the nomination committee then turned its attention to its persona of each one.

After studying the personal character and qualifications of the candidates, the committee unanimously and unqualifiedly came up with its choice: FPJ.

In justifying its choice of FPJ, the committee cited his “demonstrated desire and sincerity to serve the country and the Filipino people, his patriotism and humanity, his sterling leadership and success in the movie industry, his humility as a person, his well-known honesty, integrity, and fairness in dealing with others.” And despite the claims of FPJ’s detractors – that he never even finished college – the committee pointed out “his innate wisdom and intelligence.”

In a political milieu where the electorate is inevitably treated to the sordid details of a candidate’s private life, to whatever skeletons that might have been previously kept hidden in one’s closet, the committee also took note of FPJ’s “exemplary family background, his behavior as a family man, and his extraordinary feat considering his very young age at the time, of lifting his widowed mother and orphaned siblings for the mire of poverty after the death of his father.

Perhaps above all other considerations – a party needs votes to win an election, after all the committee gave weight to “the trust, respect and confidence FPJ commands from the general public,…. tremendous outpouring of popular support for his candidacy and the phenomenal upsurge of his rating in the latest Social Weather Stations survey then before he even declared his intention to seek the presidency; and his capacity to reunify our shattered and fragmented society and to reestablish its cohesion, and his ability to develop and build a consensus among our people about the urgent need to bring about meaningful changes and reforms in out current troubled national condition.”

By all appearances, FPJ is too far ahead to be cheated out of victory. In an election where at least four are expected to slug it out, it is always better to have that insurmountable cushion to absorb the impact of the expected fraud machine being put in motion by those who cannot expect to win except by manipulation of the voters and purported “tallying” of the ballots. (President Estrada could have had the election stolen from him in 1998, but like FPJ, he has a cushion that his opponents found impossible to overcome.) The party in power is expected to denigrate the import of surveys, but it cannot possibly ignore the real threat of a teeming mass of people determined to throw it out come election day.

Nowhere is the upsurge in the rating of FPJ more evident than in the spectacle of the ballroom of the Intercontinental Hotel being jampacked after such short a notice (less than 24 hours) by the organizers for the promulgation by the KNP of the resolution choosing FPJ as standard-bearer.

Even as this column goes to press, we are informed that the political parties to the coalition, specially the LDP, is experiencing a phenomenal rush to the KNP bandwagon, a frenzied enlistment of local candidates throughout the country for their certificates of nomination, putting a strain on the KNP secretariat and the officers of the coalition partners to accept new members dying to have their hands raised by FPJ. What we are experiencing here is déjà vu – a reprise of 1987, when every politician wanted his hand to be raised by then President Corazon Aquino, whose endorsement spelled magic.

The no-show of Da King on his “coronation” by the KNP must be read differently: He is averse to putting his candidacy solely at the mercy of the coalition of politicians; he prefers to be identified more with the people who persuaded and finally convinced him to seek the highest post of the land, those who are tired and oppressed, who hunger ad thirst for deliverance from poverty and inequity, who, in their resurgent hope for a savior, identify with FPJ.

The selection of FPJ was no more than a formality, given the circumstances. The infighting among the various opposition groups was no hindrance for the inevitable to happen. The KNP recognized rightly the need to hear the people’s clamor for change and the adoption of a standard-bearer of hope. The “coronation” was no more than an extension of the people’s growing movement to oust the smelly occupants of the Palace by the stinking river.

Erratum: My piece last week on the Sigma Rho merited me a severe rap on the knuckle from Augusto Hong, chronicler of the Sigma Rho and chief of staff of Sen. Edgardo Angara. He reminded me that there have been so far four (instead of three) Senate presidents from among their ranks, namely: Salonga, Angara, Fernan and Drilon.


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