Anybody But You

You can’t turn on the radio or go to a bar in Manila these days without listening to that Wonder Girls staple, “Nobody But You.” I’m surprised that no major politician has picked it up yet as his or her campaign jingle. But then again that could be because it’s a song that very easily suggests its reverse, i.e., anybody but you, which is how the presidential race seems to be shaping up.

The “you” here is Senator Manny Villar, the Nacionalista Party candidate who, according to the pollsters, has practically caught up with the Liberals’ Noynoy Aquino in the frontrunner’s seat. Most commentators are united in predicting that the next Filipino president will be one of these two men, with the administration bet, Gibo Teodoro, trailing far behind.

Aquino had started out of the gate last September with a tremendous lead in the polls over Villar; by early February, they were in a statistical dead heat. This was deeply troubling to Noynoy’s supporters and to the seven other presidential candidates, who had to contend with the looming prospect of a Villar presidency.

Noynoy’s drop in the surveys was no big surprise. Much of his early boost had come from the sympathy factor, from the untimely death of his universally beloved mother, former President Cory Aquino.

We Filipinos can be wonderfully if effusively expressive in our emotions, and those emotions welled up for Cory and the Aquinos at the time of, and immediately after, her passing. But then again we become woefully forgetful, get easily distracted, and can transfer our allegiance to the next colorful banner that crosses our field of vision. It’s interesting to note, in this respect, a recent survey that showed a substantial number of Cory supporters going not for Noynoy but for his new nemesis, Manny Villar.

Indeed, were it not for Cory’s death, Noynoy would never have been considered a presidential candidate, not even by himself. It took a long process of soul-searching before he agreed to run, if only to continue his parents’ fight and extend their legacy.

While that hesitation was a charming virtue to some–proof of the man’s lack of overweening ambition–it was also a sign of weakness to others like Villar, whose desire for the presidency had been no great secret. While Villar had been preparing for this battle for years, Noynoy, the surprise and initially reluctant candidate, has had to play catch-up on the political stage. That has also meant having to establish himself as a credible candidate on his own, without the mantle of Ninoy and Cory draped over his shoulders.

Villar’s surge was also attributed by one Palace adviser to the clarity and the efficacy of his narrative as a poor-boy-made-good who became a billionaire through old-fashioned “sipag at tiyaga,” industry and perseverance. Whether you believe that story or not, it’s one that apparently resonates with the masses, whose role models presumably don’t include balding Ateneans who inherited haciendas , which is how Villar and his handlers have been caricaturing Noynoy. Astutely, Villar’s celebrity endorsers (at least one of them paid, according to Jamby Madrigal, herself a candidate, P30 million) include the pang-masa likes of Dolphy and Willie Revillame.

It’s a sorry thing to see the poor and their aspirations being–once again, as in elections past–so cavalierly used and abused, and by candidates for whom poverty is an ancient memory. Villar isn’t even the original para-sa-mahirap guy; that was Joseph “Erap” Estrada, who is also running again for the post he unceremoniously lost nine years ago. (Curiously enough, both men have chosen orange as their campaign color.) Both Villar and Estrada are enormously wealthy–one, through real estate (and, his critics say, through legislative legerdemain), and the other, through entertainment (not to mention judicially proven plunder). Their pitch to the Payatas squatter seems to be, if we made it, so can you.

The only problem with that pitch is that the road to riches for both Villar and Erap seems to have been littered with scandal. Estrada’s ill-gotten wealth is an open-and-shut case; Villar can’t shake off allegations that he and his companies profited from the diversion of government projects to where they could benefit his landholdings.

Does any of this matter to the voters out there? Apparently not. They’re already calling Villar “Mr. Teflon,” after the raucous Senate hearings on the “C-5 diversion” scandal failed to derail his surge in the polls. Villar has been consolidating this advance with an endless barrage of advertisements–of poor kids singing his praises–that might make the Makati crowd barf but which, like it or not, work.

Villar, you’ll recall, was the man who said about a year ago that a serious presidential candidate in the Philippines needs at least a billion pesos to make a run for Malacañang. Well, we’re seeing that billion now, and since it’s his money, it’s probably no one’s business–but then again, having spent so much, won’t the incorrigible businessman want to make it back, and how?

So for Noynoy Aquino and the other candidates, it looks like “Anybody but Villar” should be the order of the day, which should logically mean a regrouping of forces and the sacrifice of a few ambitions. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort seems likely to happen–in which case, if his surge holds up, nobody but Manny will be our next president.