E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
The suasion of Susan
Sunday, 02 04, 2007
Susan Roces might have put herself in a bind by endorsing Chiz Escudero for senator.
Chiz Escudero deserves it, meaning, the endorsement of Susan. After all, he stood by the side of Fernando Poe Jr. in the May 2004 elections, and he has been consistent where he stands in the opposition. He will win, easily; the endorsement is a guarantee of 18 million votes for Chiz, the same number of those who voted for FPJ in 2004. Surely Susan’s message in her endorsement of Chiz is not lost on the voters: “A vote for Chiz validates our claim that we were cheated, and let us reward him, for he fought with us.”
But one man’s venison is another man’s poison. So while Susan’s good word for Chiz is definitely healthy for him, that solitary seal of approval bodes ill for the rest of the candidates in the slate of the United Opposition (UNO) not endorsed by her; and equally bad for Susan, who will now have to tread ever slowly if she ever decides to endorse some others in the UNO slate.
Take Kiko Pangilinan, for example, in the event he is included in the UNO slate. Will Susan throw the weight of her entire fandom, as well as that of her late husband, behind this centurion of the administration who gaveled down to oblivion the valid claims of the lawyers of her husband who was cheated out of the presidency? I definitely should hope not. I fervently hope that not even the importunings of his megastar wife will move Susan to raise the hand of Pangilinan. Without Susan’s affirmation — and now without the overt support of the administration which propelled him to the Senate in 2001 — Pangilinan is likely to end up in the senatorial race en brochette, skewered by the barbs of his own deviousness.
The same predicament stares those who, in 2004, were on the wrong side of the political and electoral divide but have now crossed over to the UNO side. These turncoats should banish any thought of being endorsed by Susan; and they simply have to live with the fact that no votes from the FPJ voters will ever accrue to them.
For all her good intentions of seeing Chiz elected senator, to carry on the fight for her late husband, Susan — whether she is aware of it — has become the single biggest albeit tacit endorser of those who fought for her husband in 2004 who are not in the UNO slate but are running anyway. At the same time, she has become the single biggest oppositor to, and campaigner for a negative vote for, those who in 2004 maneuvered the defeat of her husband but who now have suddenly found shelter in the UNO umbrella.
Either way, the opposition will lose its advantage.
It is not farfetched to imagine that only those in the UNO slate endorsed by Susan have a chance of coming in from the cold. But there are not many of them, given the sad fact that UNO is now conveniently overrun by modern-day Sauls, outnumbering those who have been consistently opposition.
On the other hand, those who have been shunted out of the UNO slate and who now align themselves with the slate of the administration, or in the Unity Ticket or Third Force, whatever one might want to call it, but who fought for FPJ in 2004 — Tito Sotto, for instance — would have to be endorsed by Susan as well, if she is to be consistent with her avowal of a payback for those who stood by her husband.
But wait — Roces endorsing a candidate outside of the UNO slate? That would be unthinkable! But supposing she does, will not the opposition be the ultimate loser? Candidates who get the A-OK from Susan, other than those from UNO, will win. But these putative winners would not count at all for the UNO. Expect them to toe the line of the party under which they were elected. And the entire slate of UNO cannot hope to score a sweep, either.
Having already endorsed Chiz, Susan is expected to endorse all those other candidates under the banner of the UNO, including Pangilinan, et alia. But will she? That would be denying the endorsement to the likes of Sotto, who deserve Susan’s affirmation more than Chiz.
Flashback to 1987: President Cory Aquino endorses all 24 candidates for the Senate of the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP). She did not have any problem then with that wholesale sanction, the distinction between those who were consistently on her side and those consistently against her having been very clear. Twenty-two of them won. That was the Cory Magic working, the enchantment wielded by the widow of the martyr in the fight against Marcos.
Fast forward to 2007: The widow Susan certainly has that same magic. All she has to do is raise her hand and wave her wand. But she will have to decide where — and on whom — to point that wand. Today, save for Chiz, her hands are tied. Or at best, heavy and weighted down with the fear that, should she point one way or the other, the gesture would dishonor the memory of the man who was robbed of a presidency, and instead help perpetuate the very regime that the opposition wants to displace.
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