It happened on a lonely hill in a quiet town, where every bridge is a checkpoint manned by young men in fatigues. Esmael Mangudadatu, Buluan vice mayor, threatened with violence, sending his wife Genalyn, his sister, his nieces and his lawyers to file his certificate of candidacy because he believed women would be safe. Esmael Mangudadatu, inviting a pack of journalists to cover the event, because he believed his family would be safe where the media were. Esmael Mangudadatu, answering the last phone call from a wife who told him they had been stopped by Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr.’s private army.

Witnesses say they heard the gunshots. “Ra-ta-ta-ta-tat,” says the barefoot man with the face browned by sun. He heard it, at ten in the morning. Ra-ta-ta-ta-tat. He says it did not last long.

A road, winding past clapboard carwashes and houses of crosshatched palm, bamboo fences trailing soft pink blossoms. A sky, blue, sweeping over sprawling green. A cliff-side, under a yellow sun. This is where they were found, men and women, Mangudadatu’s caravan of untouchables, bleeding into the dry earth, some still sitting inside the white vans with doors flung open. One by one, the others are dug out of a great gaping pit. Bodies, buried in tiers six deep, bloated huge and white, shirts browned by blood, pants bunched at the knees, faces like mashed clay. They unearth a UNTV van, a red Toyota Vios, a crumpled Tamaraw FX. The investigators offer what dignity they can. Newspapers are laid over faces, over crotches, over dirt-encrusted stomachs swollen to the size of overripe watermelons. Some of the dead once wrote for the papers covering their heads.

The flies flock over the bodies. A young man from UNTV stands over the six new corpses. He is looking for his friends, he says. When he finds them, he steps back and watches a drinking buddy wrapped in sheets of red plastic, secured by masking tape, hauled up on a stretcher. The smell of dead stretches down the hill. A backhoe sits at the bottom, one long arm stamped with “Province of Maguindanao.”

Witnesses say they saw armed men, more than 50, walking down the hill, off to the direction of Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao’s provincial capital—where the sprawling peach-and-pink mansions of Andal Ampatuan Sr. and his son Andal Jr. face each other on a street littered with soldiers, on the same street of the enormous peach-and-pink capitol building. It was the capitol where Presidential Adviser for Mindanao Jesus Dureza landed his two helicopters to pick up Andal Jr., the same Dureza who waited for Andal Jr. to “voluntarily come in for questioning.” Of the Ampatuans, Presidential Spokesperson Lorelei Fajardo says that “just because they’re in this situation doesn’t mean we will turn our backs on them,” as if this government has ever had any compunction about turning its back on allies. This is what an “appalled and outraged” president does when the last democratic institution is gunned down on a public road: she offers government helicopters and permits a suspect to ride a private plane, allows evidence to disappear while suspects twirl their guns, lets her executive secretary appeal to suspected murderers to “surrender to authorities” instead of insisting they be ripped out of their holes, and then she expects the nation to applaud her like her moronic deputies.

Fifty-seven (according to the Armed Forces of the Philippines) were murdered last Monday. Thirty of them belonged to the media, 30 men and women whose presence in this benighted country has become the one assurance that the worst will not happen. No guns will be drawn while a camera rolls, but even that safety is gone. Not once in the history of journalism has carnage like this happened to so many. There are no more rules, no lines left to cross. The government would like to give Andal Jr. his dignity, they want to make sure he is treated fairly, they trip over their own tangled lies for his sake. And yet there was no dignity left in the men and women found bloated and half-naked in Sitio Masalay, stripped of notebook and camera and wallet, stripped of face and name, until some unfortunate daughter recognizes Papa’s shirt or Mama’s pants.

Remember their names. Benjie Adolfo, Gold Star Daily. Henry Araneta, Radio dzRH. Mark Gilbert “Mac-Mac” Arriola, UNTV. Rubello Bataluna, Gold Star Daily. Arturo Betia, Periodico Ini. Romeo Jimmy Cabillo, Midland Review. Marites Cablitas, News Focus. Hannibal Cachuela, Punto News. John Caniban, Periodico Ini. Lea Dalmacio, Socsargen News. Noel Decina, Periodico Ini. Gina Dela Cruz, Saksi News, General Santos City. Eugene Dohillo, UNTV. Jhoy Duhay, Gold Star Daily. Santos Gatchalian, dxGO. Bienvenido Legarte Jr., Prontiera News. Lindo Lupogan, Mindanao Daily Gazette. Ernesto “Bart” Maravilla, Bombo Radyo. Rey Merisco, Periodico Ini, Koronadal City. Reynaldo “Bebot” Momay, Midland Review. Marife “Neneng” Montaño, Saksi News. Rosell Morales, News Focus. Victor Nuñez, UNTV. Ronnie Perante, Gold Star Daily. Joel Parcon, Prontiera News. Fernando “Rani” Razon, Periodico Ini. Alejandro “Bong” Reblando, Manila Bulletin. Napoleon Salaysay, Mindanao Gazette. Ian Subang, Socsargen Today. Andres “Andy” Teodoro, Central Mindanao Inquirer.

There were threats against the media in the days after the massacre. But on the day they ripped swollen bodies out of Ampatuan soil, there were photojournalists lining the crest of the cliff like an honor guard, long lenses glinting in the sun. There was a cameraman who stepped away from a tripod to wipe away tears, a veteran in an orange hat with an arm around an orphan. It was both tribute and promise.

This is what the men who fired those machine guns last Monday did not know: that there is no journalist today who will not stand for those who were lost. Remember what happened here, on a lonely hill in a quiet town, where a blue sky sweeps over sprawling green. Remember Ampatuan, and remember their names.

On Wednesday, Estrada pulled out his signature from Resolution 1472, because of the timing of the resolution’s release. “You know, people might say that I accepted the offer of the NP as a guest candidate in exchange for my signature of that particular resolution.”

On Friday, Senator Estrada pulled out from the Nacionalista slate, “because a lot of people are speculating that I am turning my back from my father’s Puwersa ng Masang Pilipino.” Estrada says that he continues to “value’’ Villar as a “friend.’’

“People might say,” says Estrada. “People are speculating.” Odd remarks for a man who seems to have no compunction about what “people might say” about his political seesawing. Perhaps he does not feel “people might say” there is anything wrong with making decisions and changing decisions of national import based on personal whim, especially decisions that supposedly manifest some personal conviction. Of course he believes Villar is innocent, of course Villar is “a friend,” but he will withdraw his support anyway, because the politically motivated resolution he signed now appears politically motivated.

Estrada is not the only politician afflicted with abrupt epiphanies.

In 2001 Sen. Loren Legarda condemned Joseph “Erap” Estrada, cried at what she believed was a travesty of justice during his failed impeachment hearing, and walked along Edsa at the head of a flock ousting Erap.

In 2004, she ran for vice president with the Erap-nominated Fernando Poe Jr. with Erap’s support.

In 2008, as senator, she supported the ouster of then Senate President Manny Villar, following the C-5 double-insertion controversy, and criticized his unwillingness to participate in the Senate probe. Last Monday, she signed Resolution 1472 absolving Villar long before a committee report had been released on the probe, following the announcement that she would run as his vice president.

Marcos’ son Bongbong also took shelter under the generous Villar banner, joining anti-Marcos party-list congressmen who had long been campaigning for compensation to human rights victims during martial law. Villar sees nothing wrong with this. “It’s known that we can’t agree on all issues, we just need to keep this in mind. All of us, the important thing is our love for the poor, our desire to eradicate poverty, and the need to unify all sectors.”

For his part, Marcos agreed with Villar’s statement saying that as long as all candidates under the NP agree and that the foundation of their candidacy is helping the poor, then they are “committed and ready to fight this fight.”

The same grand welcome was extended by Sen. Noynoy Aquino and his Liberal Party to former Sen. Ralph Recto, an administration stalwart and Arroyo apologist—an odd phenomenon in a party claiming to herald the end to traditional politics. Recto had run under the administration ticket in 2007 and lost, and now claims he was invited into the Aquino-Roxas fold. That LP’s Sergio Osmeña III took a principled stand against welcoming the former socioeconomic secretary and his superstar wife apparently made little dent in the party’s decision, another decision that put premium on showbiz over substance. Now Osmeña is out, but the party is still united. After all, theirs also is a party whose main goal is “addressing poverty and decency in government.”

The administration party, suddenly barren of all the President’s men, pulled in television host Edu Manzano. Administration standard-bearer Gilbert Teodoro now claims they are still strong and united by the fight against poverty. “To ensure the people’s exercise of their human rights, he said he would address the four faces of poverty: Poverty of the mind, poverty of the pocket, poverty of the environment and the poverty of relationships.”

And so the horse-trading and chair-switching go on, with little loss of face. There are no loyalties, there are no colors, because no matter what “people might say,” they are all united in a grand commitment to end poverty and bring back good governance, all in the service of the Filipino nation.

It is November, and carols are tinkling away in shopping mall elevators. It is the season of bouncing checks and bad promises, of neon stars glowing along cracked concrete bridges, of cold rain falling on girls with glitter-blue eyelids cocking bare legs in plastic heels at Quezon Avenue traffic. Morning show hosts shriek Christmas countdowns, while stores are robbed accordingly with every day closer to the holidays. A taxi driver was held up for his watch and belt, and a Filipino-Chinese father with a bullet in his back crashed his van a block away from Ospital ng Maynila, after he and his family were waylaid in Parañaque.

It is possible, at this time, for a 44-year-old housewife to be shot in the face two blocks from her home by a teenager for the P700 in her handbag. Merry Christmas, deck the halls, watch your step, don’t walk in the dark.

It is November, and this is Manila, slapped by wind, drowned by rain, scraping mud off baby shoes while televisions blare with news of 2010’s candidates playing musical chairs. Watch them dance; hear them sing. Blink, and the dancers change. Blink, and the music breaks. Thirty-three days to Christmas, a hundred sixty-five to the grand new day. See the blinking lights; hear the beating drum. This is the promise of 2010.

The party-list law was created to allow the underrepresented to contribute to national legislation, an acknowledgement that a democracy can easily ignore the needs of minorities. There are some who argue that the presence of homosexuals in every other industry bars them from claiming minority status, and they would be wrong. A minority isn’t a function of number. That the national census reports a population of more women than men has not been a reason to withhold party-list status from Gabriela and Abanse! Pinay, the same reason that Kabataan party’s first youth representative sits in Congress today. Being a minority is to live in a state of helplessness, to be denied a voice in the structure of their future. On Nov. 11, the Comelec presented the clearest reason for why Ang Ladlad deserves party representation, by reminding the thinking public that even in the dawn of the 21st century, bigotry is alive in all its brilliant, bible-thumping, mad-eyed fervor—not only alive, but penning Comelec decisions in the service of the nation.

The decision claims it is not written to condemn the LGBT, only to protect the wellbeing of the people, especially the youth, from moral and spiritual degradation. I do not understand how political representation leads to moral and spiritual degradation, and find no reason in their arguments other than that “the bible says so.” This is what it means for the Comelec—and therefore the government—to claim the homosexual and the lesbian and the transsexual in the five-inch heels are dangerous to the youth: that these people deserve less than anyone else, that they are the other, to be shunned and condemned, deserving of every discriminatory action they have fought against since they started stepping out of dark closets. To accept this decision as a given allows the bouncer to turn away the transsexual girl from the high-class club, justifies the firing of the male call center agent for having a boyfriend, and makes right the beating of 12-year-old effeminate boys in the back of high-school buildings. The decision is a ham-fisted punch to the face of democracy, marginalizing what they are supposed to empower.

It’s bad enough that Ang Ladlad was initially refused on a technicality, at a time when the armed militia—represented in every sector of government—was declared a minority, along with groups of enterprising businessmen and unions of water distribution personnel and organizations of barangay captains. The LGBT, denied insurance premiums and asked by bosses to stay in closets, are told they are a danger to society. Take out your children from Ateneo; Danton Remoto might turn them gay. Pull out your subscription from the Inquirer; Manolo Quezon might kill their spirituality. Shut off your television, stay away from the beauty parlors, watch out for those high heels. Not only will the state permit discrimination, it will applaud it in the name of God and country. So they quote scripture and verse with fundamentalist vigor from a religion that has itself evolved since the day 2,000 years ago when a 30-year-old storyteller was hung on a cross between thieves. Theirs is a selective morality—blame God for your bigotry when possible; ignore the rest. Their democracy is one of convenience, free only when it agrees with their narrow-minded vision. It is fine to quote Romans about homosexuality, “men with men working that which is unseemly” but I did not hear government agencies thundering the seventh commandment when Joseph Estrada ran for office after gleefully admitting his string of mistresses.

The Comelec decision is all the more ironic given that the basis for disqualification of any party-list group is religious affiliation. There is a reason there is a line between Church and state within a democracy. It is because morality is arbitrary; taken on faith by some, denied by others. Law provides a framework where multiple moralities can function, for as long as the most basic universal rights are respected. Without that divide, the whole grand idea of equality and freedom becomes simply an idea, limited by the righteousness of the powerful. And still the Comelec quotes Lehman Strauss, “a famous bible teacher and writer in the U.S.A” who says that “older practicing homosexuals are a threat to the youth,” as if Strauss were the authority on Philippine law instead of a Baptist pastor preaching online from Pennsylvania who believes that “the woman’s God-given nature is to be dependent.”

To allow Ang Ladlad’s petition does not mean supporting their beliefs. It has nothing to do with advocating gay marriage or allowing homosexuals in the military. It does not stop the average bigot from calling the corner hairdresser a fag. It is about acknowledging a democratic right to the citizens of a democratic country—no matter how little that democracy means now.

His father watched him die, almost five years to this day. Nov. 16 was when close to 15,000 tenants gathered to protest their treatment under the Cojuanco-owned Hacienda Luisita. Dispersal units charged with a thousand soldiers in full battle gear. The Northern Command numbered over five hundred. Stones and shouts, water cannons, tanks that barreled into gates. It was three in the afternoon. The sun burned yellow. The father heard it first: rifle cracks, a barrage of bullets punching through bodies. Jesus died that day, one of seven reported union deaths. They tell me there are more whose names were never reported.

They called it a massacre. Sen. Benigno Aquino III called it propaganda.

On that day, Federico Laza and other farmhands loaded the 38-year-old Jesus into a tricycle. The father wept and Jesus bled. It was too late when they brought him to the hospital. The police claimed they found powder burns on Jesus’ hands, proof he, too, had a gun. The autopsy said otherwise.

Today, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III runs for president of the country his father died for.

I believed in him, not very long ago. I believed in him in spite of a long-ago interview on Hacienda Luisita, on his first run as senator. As it happened, I was standing by Federico Laza, looking at a death certificate, while Noynoy claimed the dead were Manila radicals shipped to Tarlac for the purpose of terrorizing the hacienda. He said the farmers were content, and that all I knew were left-wing lies. The Cojuangcos still own Luisita, even if on paper they are meant to share profit with the same starving farmers who are worse off now than before they were made to sign land meant for them into stock market shares.

And still I was glad Noynoy was running, believed his mistakes, and his mother’s, were a result of their class and could change in the lead-up to 2010. I believed he could bring together a scattered field of candidates, pare down the fight between administration and opposition. I believed that the myth of the Aquinos behind him would be enough to convince his rivals to throw their support behind one candidate, and allow him to prove he was not just a paper doll hero, a crudely-cut outline of his parents. I was afraid he might lose. Now I am afraid he may win. I wish I still believed in him, because without him there’s very little left in the rogue’s gallery of would-be leaders.

For months he has been leading headlines. The Aquino son, soaring on the wings of heroes. His rivals have not stepped back; the field is still open. A fever sweeps through the media, crowning Noynoy, the man who has yet to say anything that is not an echo of the old revolution. Remember my father. Remember my mother. Vote for me, and you vote for them. And that is all. It has been months since he became suddenly the nation’s moral choice, and there is little resembling platform, policy or position. Miracle, they call him. This is the revolution, say his supporters. This is Edsa. So he may not be as intelligent. So he may not be as articulate. So he may not have proven himself. And because we are faced with the usual array of the corrupt and the devout, we wait, we believe. And we are rewarded, in all its cinematic splendor, by a music video.

The scene is a forest, in the dark of the night. Yellow shirts and soft yellow light, Regine Velasquez by a fire in the woods, singing of togetherness and unity and a farewell to fear. There is the small child, offering a bamboo torch to the senator. There is talk show host Boy Abunda, standing on a boat manned by a young boy. There is Kris Aquino, Noynoy’s sister, who is rumored to have been wining and dining A-list celebrities to support her brother. It is national unity via television ratings: the top stars of the warring networks linked by yellow. ABS-CBN’s darlings of prime time television are lit beautifully in the flickering firelight, holding their bamboo torches, hair bouncing as they walk, smiling soulfully into the distance. The camera lets GMA7’s number one love team Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera look lovingly at each other as they walk on, a smiling Sharon Cuneta raises a lantern, Ogie Alcasid marches with torch. There is the odd farmer and soldier, but it’s clear who the stars are. And so the full shot, a great phalanx of torch-bearing, yellow-clad men and women marching to battle, the celebrities at the front lines. Through it all, Noynoy smiles at children, at people, at the camera, smiles blankly, and you can almost hear him count in his head the seconds before he has to turn to the lens. In the end, he leaps awkwardly up to a mound of soil, surrounded by his beautiful constituency, and a sun explodes behind him in shattering brilliance.

In a nation where government responsibility has shifted to the media, and calls for aid are directed to newsroom desks instead of the hotlines of the National Disaster Coordinating Council, this sort of move isn’t particularly surprising. A united GMA7 and ABS-CBN may seem like the best of metaphors for a united nation, but it says very much about the sort of man Noynoy Aquino is. Flanked by stars, surrounded by celebrities, content to ride on the waving banner stamped with his parents’ faces. There is no message, other than that personality is king. There are no voices, not even his. His defenders say it’s not the time for campaign—and yet that video rolls on and on in prime time television. You are not alone, they say, but who stands with you? Anne Curtis? Ate Shawie? Marielle Rodriguez? Just recently, Noynoy promised to give up his share of Hacienda Luisita, and yet denies knowing of eviction notices to farmers even while the case sits in the Supreme Court. Laza continues to march in rallies, five years after a bullet ripped a good man away. Nothing has changed, the same songs, the same names, the same injustices.

They say the miracles are colored yellow now—the yellow of thick lengths of ribbon, the triumphant swags of bright flag, the inside edge of a flame on a bamboo torch held up to a camera lens, the same yellow of grass outside the gates of Hacienda Luisita, where a man named Jesus once walked with his father.

Escudero announced he was defecting from the NPC, at a press conference where, both press and his party believed, he would finally declare his intentions to run for president. He gave three reasons.

First, he says that whoever plans to run as president must not belong to any party, not NPC, LP, NP, Lakas or any other, but must belong to the party of the Philippine people. In the grand tradition of Chiz Escudero, the rhetoric flowed on greased wheels. This is the ideal presidential candidate: “All his partymates must be all Filipinos. Child or adult, woman or man, rich or poor, the educated and the not, yellow or red of color, whether a supporter or not, should be treated equally and the same. He cannot only see and hear what his partymates say, while he sees only from afar those who do not belong to his party, those who do not belong to his group.”

Second, he says, “whoever is running, will run, or will become president of the nation must not be chained hand and foot to the party.” If this is all that will happen, he says, the same as ever before, he cannot resolve the nation’s problems. “For me, one party cannot dictate the actions of whoever is running for office. If this is the case, how can he hold accountable the corrupt in government if they belong to his own party?” He gave, to his credit, a list of concrete changes from welfare to security to the state of the oil industry.

But third, he says, “I am leaving my party because I believe that in this way I can achieve what I am to do and the role I am meant to fulfill with regard to the elections, at this time, at this minute, not as a member of any party, not as a partner to anyone, but only myself, as myself.”

In summary, this is what all three of his points mean: A man running for president must not belong to a party, because to belong to a party is to give up independence of action.

In a follow-up interview with TV Patrol’s Ted Failon, asked on what occasion his party has unfairly dictated his actions and choices, Escudero denied he can be dictated to.

“I have never been influenced by my party. When the majority of my partymates partnered with GMA, I was the leader of the opposition in Congress. When some of my partymates ran under the administration in 2007, I ran under the Genuine Opposition, and they respected and accepted it.”

It is difficult to understand then Escudero’s sudden denouncement of party loyalties. With the unimpeachable character he claims to possess, there seems to be little need for the fuss and drama of a party defection. He claims, although he has never been influenced as senator or congressman, to run for president demands more. Assuming there is truth to his claim, he is admitting he suspects he will have less personal conviction as a president, or he believes less was needed as a congressman.

Every party defection is generally a political decision, and the few ideological ones are far between. After all, there is a reason why parties exist in this nation, and it is not for some vaunted idea of ideology. Every party announces good governance as its platform, with little to no variation from over the fence. A party provides machinery, offers financial support, provides a network that can cross over a country as dispersed as the Philippines. I have little to say about the practicability of Escudero’s remaining in the NPC, what I find distasteful is the great white banner of morality he is waving to justify a political decision. Perhaps there is truth in rumors of a lack of financial support, or a falling-out between party members, but whatever the reason, I find it difficult to swallow Escudero’s defection as a righteous stand, the same way I cannot buy Jose de Venecia Jr.’s moral revolution.

The rhetoric shoots itself in the foot. He claims he cannot be corrupted, that his decisions are his own. He denies his party has ever influenced him in the past. And yet he raises an indignant finger at the concept of party loyalties itself, as if a party, irrelevant of the man, can compromise a presidency. He denounces the idea of looking only to a party for advice, when nothing compels a man to look only to his own party. His entire list of changes he wants done are admirable, none of which have anything to do with whether or not he belongs to a party—assuming of course he is the same man he claims to have been in Congress. If he wants to strip himself of the dirt of his own particular party, well and good, but again, it has little to do with the concept of a party, and more to say about the NPC itself.

I do not write this to defend the NPC, or to celebrate the less than admirable goals of the existing party system. I write this because I am offended by one man claiming to be a hero when he is simply a man who made a choice for himself, the same as most men, I write this because I am one of the young people he claims to represent. Mostly, I write this because, very frankly, I cannot trust a man whose mouth says one thing, and his eyes another.

He is aware that some have raised issues of his inexperience. “Some said I’m not yet ripe for the picking.”

There is only one reason for Noynoy Aquino to join the mad race for the 2010 presidency. It is because he is Ninoy’s son and Cory’s child, his father dead with a promise on his lips and a bullet lodged at the side of his neck, his mother the lady in yellow who rose to battle when she could have knelt and wept. When Ninoy Aquino bled on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport, his wife’s candidacy was forged by a nation so desperate it was willing to settle for a presidential candidate whose only qualification was the dull gleam of a wedding ring.

Cory Aquino did not win that election alone. Chino Roces won it, when he plodded from office to office, collecting signatures to demonstrate the people’s support. Eggie Apostol and Joe Burgos won it, with issue after issue of their publications raising sneering middle fingers to the Marcos censors. And, some have forgotten, Doy Laurel won it, by setting aside a lifetime of presidential aspiration and allowing the opposition to make way for a woman who said she did not want the presidency.

And there is the crux of next year’s elections: a great wide field of hand-shaking, jingle-humming, speech-making would-be oppositionist presidents and their phalanx of spin doctors and kingmakers. They struggle against a Goliath, they say. 2010 is the time to loose the hands of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from its tenacious hold on the ship of state.

So they send out their press releases and smile at the reporters. Here are the chosen men of God – although it must be an uncertain God to have three men of the cloth announce the blessing of heaven. Here are the reformists, the patriots, the people’s champions, all kissing babies and answering on cue, each and every one – and their wives – preparing for the presidency. None have acknowledged the fact that their candidacies are thinning the margins of an already fragmented opposition, while the administration carefully primes its one candidate.

I know very little of Noynoy, and even his greatest supporters have little to say of his achievements in his two years as senator of the republic. He seems to have little of his father’s eloquence, and less of his mother’s appealing charm. It is difficult to admit that this country is so desperate for leaders that this man may walk down the campaign path on the strength of no more than the accident of genetics – this boy born of heroes, pushed by fate and faith into a rain of yellow confetti, with little to commend him other than his hesitation.

And yet there is the possibility it will be enough, that the weight of giants at his back may propel him all the way to the Palace. The question depends not so much on whether he can achieve support, the question is what will happen if he does. The danger of a vote split four, five, six ways across opposition candidates is very real. And so Noli de Castro will run on the administration treadmill, powered by the machinery of the national government against a scattershot of messiahs and champions, none willing to compromise their grand sacrifices of serving the nation.

Look at the landscape. Manny Villar pulls away at the polls, his several advertising agencies doing justice to the millions he paid in prime time airing. Mar Roxas says there is no turning back, as he pedals on to 2010. “I want to make big changes in our country and the presidency is the only vantage point at which that can be done.” Jamby Madrigal has “crossed the Rubicon,” Eddie Villanueva runs under what he described as “politics of God,” Mike Velarde is “dreaming of becoming president,” Joseph Estrada is “99.9 percent” sure of running if the opposition does not field a single candidate and Loren Legarda believes she can only save Mother Earth “if I am president of my country.”

There are many who question Noynoy’s inexperience, and it is right they do. But these are desperate times, and in the same way I’d rather see an untried college professor who would rather spend his time watching birds sitting in the Pampanga House of Representatives, I’ll take Ninoy’s son if he can bring the nation at his feet.

Governor Ed Panlilio has already offered his bid for the presidency to the young senator, and as slim as Panlilio’s chances are, it is the sort of gesture that demonstrates the sort of human spirit that launched a singing revolution in the face of a cannon’s mouth. Roxas will not bend to Estrada, neither will Villar bow to Escudero, but they might for Ninoy’s son and Cory’s child.

“Many ask why I remain undecided,” Aquino says. “In the first place, I had no plans of running for higher office. It’s not an easy job. I ask you, how many can honestly raise their hands and volunteer to take on this great responsibility? You have to think it over before you accept the challenge. You don’t want to fail. Most important, you don’t want to fail those who believe in you.”

Of course he can be another paper doll hero, to be dressed up and discarded in the same pile as Jun Lozada and Joker Arroyo. There can only be one Cory Aquino, but it was her example that demonstrated how integrity in leadership is not contingent on political experience, it is dependent on character. I do not know if Noynoy is what this nation needs, but if he can ride on the shoulders of his parents all the way to 2010, and bend the opposition to his will, I’ll take what comes after on faith.

Let me take you to the court of this man we call chief justice, the gentleman who smiled at suggestions that he abandon his post as justice. “I must consult my advisers,” he says, his grandchildren of three and four and seven. How whimsical, some said. How charming, said others, the wisest man in the land bowing to three tots in a decision that will affect the fate of the nation. Others saw it for what it was not. It was not an outright refusal, as it should have been. It was not a reproof to those who dared assault the system he was meant to protect from even the echoes of this sort of rumor. It was an invitation—ask me, convince me, keep my name on the national headline. It was that same coyness that began the 2 million signature drive to “convince” Chief Justice Reynato Puno to run for the presidency, that gave credence to Sen. Ping Lacson’s posturing as a martyr willing to give up ambition for a higher cause, that had four-year-old party Ang Kapatiran raising their voices in hope and prayer.

More ominous is this: that this symbol of justice, of law and order, announced to all who would listen that the people should not pin their hopes on the legal system—the one bulwark at a time when there is little left to believe in—but instead pin their hopes on a moral system, on some vague notion of a moral revolution.

He talks about “character,” as “who we are when no one is watching.” Who is this man, when nobody watched? He is the man who represented the Marcos government in the martial law years with Marcos’ solicitor general Estelito Mendoza, his mentor. He is the man who defended the 1973 constitution that extended the term of Ferdinand Marcos. He acted as both solicitor general and minister of justice in Mendoza’s stead at a time when many were lost and killed in the same fashion that those he stands for now were lost and killed. He is the man who has failed to inhibit himself repeatedly in cases involving his friends, including decisions that favored his erstwhile mentor. And he was conveniently on leave during the momentous decisions on the CPR (calibrated preemptive response), Proclamation 1017, and RA 464.

He said, in one of his many public appearances, that there are too many laws. He said that the problem is that there is a lack of morality.

Now he says he will not run, after shaking hands with activist priest Robert Reyes and listening to his appeals, after his long lectures on morality and claims to great character. He may be a good man, a moral man. But we do not need a man, moral or otherwise, or at least, moral by the standards of Puno himself. What we need is a judge of men, not one who has made himself so open to judgment.

And so the battle: the towering Goliath, armor glinting in the sunlight, David with his staff and sling. There was taunting, and the names of gods were thrown as curses, and David struck Goliath with a stone from his sling. The Philistine fell, and young David cut off the Philistine’s head. At Goliath’s death, “the troops of Israel and Judah rose up with a shout and pursued the Philistines as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron.”

I am told that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is running for office in Pampanga. Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman denies the Philippine Daily Inquirer report quoting the President’s intentions, and both Pampanga Vice Governor Joseller Guiao and Quezon City Representative Matias Defensor point to the fact that Ms Arroyo has yet to announce her political plan. And yet both gentlemen of the administration say that her candidacy will be welcome news. Defensor says it would mean a leader with experience. Guiao says she makes his townsmen happy, as “she brings many projects and our people are benefiting from them.”

It is Cabinet Secretary Silvestre Bello who couches his opinion in terms of the myth. David would face Goliath, but Goliath would win.

I have seen the photograph of sociology professor Randy David on his motorcycle, a gray-haired Don Quixote riding off to chase his unreachable star. This is what he calls the gauntlet he tossed before his President, a quixotic quest. In “Man of La Mancha,” Aldonza tells Don Quixote that there is no use for heroes. The world is a dung heap, she says, “and maggots crawl over it.” Whether I win or lose does not matter, says Quixote. “Only that I follow the quest.”

The fact that I understand we are desperate for heroes, and that we have settled, again and again, for men who cast tall shadows by walking on stilts, does not mean I’m not looking for the man with the balls to walk through the dung. This is what a hero is: a man who stands at the mouth of hell and chooses to step into the dark. It is not that choice that makes a hero, it is the choices he makes after – the way he walks the path, the way he stands before Goliath, the choices he makes long after his sling runs out of stones. The killing fields of Cambodia and the bones buried in Holocaust graves were results of the intentions of messiahs who claimed they wanted to make the world a better place.

I do not know if David is a hero, but I do know that he and his Ducati stand in the way of a giant whose lumbering gait can crush what is left of a disillusioned country. Speaker Prospero Nograles questions David’s intentions: in that he will run to prevent Ms Arroyo from winning – “only because he disliked PGMA [Arroyo] and not the usual reason for running, which is for public service.”

It will be perhaps the greatest public service to prevent the Arroyo dynasty from committing one more national rape – the sort that Nograles happily cheers on from the sidelines, while waiting for his turn.

Take a look at this country. Count the suicides. Look at the father who fed his children refuse from the trash bin of a restaurant and cried as he watched them die. Look at the senator who shakes the grimy hands of her constituents and calls herself a middle-class single mother with a P42-million net worth – not even counting the Forbes Park home she failed to declare. Look at the billions in corruption. Look at the arrogance of the generals. Look at the woman buried in a cement-filled drum. Look at the presidential son crowing from his perch in the House of Representatives, laughing at the man who says he will not allow Ms Arroyo to continue on with her shenanigans in his own backyard. And so he should laugh. After all, so did Goliath.

This is where the story begins.

Bello calls it “a normal human craving,” the desire “to challenge a strong opponent.” It is a craving that perhaps Bello is missing, along with a large number of the House of Representatives – theirs is a craving to attach themselves to power.

And yet Bello is wrong. It is not a desire to fight against a Goliath that drives people behind David. It is the same candle-lit support that pushed a Catholic priest into power over the heads of dynasties. It’s this odd notion called hope, persistent in spite of the awareness that this man may just be another Arroyo: brought to power on the shoulders of a hopeful nation, only to put on her hob-nailed boots. People will pay for his placards, will walk in his rallies, will torch the effigies and start online campaigns, will drop their last twenty into a mayonnaise can for a man who offers a possibility of something better than this.

Perhaps this is what David knows, what Joseph Campbell once said so eloquently when he spoke of the path of heroes. We have not even to risk the adventure alone. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. “And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”

“The challenge,” says Pangilinan, “is how to convince these 9 million first-time voters that if they unite and choose the right leaders, it will be the end of rotten governance.”

And perhaps in an effort to make the choice simpler, his wife Sharon Cuneta announced on the same night to his constituents (and the national media) that her husband was intending to run for the second-highest position in the land. Pangilinan had previously announced he would run for vice president, but it was an announcement that made little impact – until now.

The Megastar says that her husband has “proven his worth.”

Pangilinan says his wife will be seen more often in the registration campaign.

She says she will support him as the nation’s “Second Lady.”

He says his stepdaughter, celebrity KC Concepcion, whose fan base among the youth rivals her mother’s, is likely to also join the campaign for voters to register, thereby tossing a glittering bucket of political color into the necessary cause of voter suffrage, painting an otherwise noble movement as just another vehicle for someone’s political campaign.

And yet, in the grand carnival that is Philippine politics, Pangilinan still deserves credit for acknowledging his intent to run this early. I intended to write about the gallery of aspirants who “will let the people decide” whether they will run for the 2010 elections. I wanted to say just what I thought of Richard Gordon’s emotional breakdown at the ANC Leadership Forum when asked to talk about his heroes, and why, for example, I believe it was gutless for Governor Ed Panlilio to meander over grand ideas of “dialogue” and “democracy” when asked about his stand on reproductive health and contraception.

I wanted to talk about a leadership beyond statements of pursuing truth and justice, of “leading by example” and “love and service to the nation.” I wanted to say I found it odd that Senator Mar Roxas’ media campaign team allowed him to be shot for a commercial sitting prettily on a pedicab pedaled by a pair of skinny minors. I wanted to describe why it is stunning to hear a man with illusions of the presidency repeatedly describe himself and his platform as one in opposition to President Macapagal-Arroyo’s, forgetting perhaps that defining the enemy does not define the man.

And still I will respect them, no matter how little meat exists in the answers they rattled off to last week’s expectant Ateneo de Manila audience. They were there, in a rare instance, allowing themselves to be held momentarily accountable before national television – an exercise that several presidential aspirants clearly did not feel was necessary.

But this is not a column about them, or about what is ominous about Pangilinan’s campaign, not when Commission on Elections Chair Jose Melo announces to a nation gearing up for presidential elections that the 2010 change of presidency may in fact be a lost cause.

According to the former justice, partisan groups who want to stop the elections can attempt the same procurement anomaly case filed in 2003 against the Comelec and the Mega Pacific consortium. Melo claims the court challenge can be timed months before the balloting, and can jeopardize the P11.3-billion automation contract. If the case successfully merits a temporary restraining order, it will be too late for the Comelec to prepare for manual elections.

“That is what we are afraid of. That is sabotage. That is a no-election scenario. That would be chaos.”

It was bidding irregularities that caused the Supreme Court to void Mega Pacific’s P1.3-billion contract in 2003. It is not a surprise that the Comelec chairman believes it is possible for partisan groups to use any and all means to serve their political ambitions. That is a possibility we have learned to expect in a country where blocks of cash bribes are distributed in plain sight, and a favorite ring tone has the chief executive negotiating votes with an election chief. What is ominous is that the Comelec chairman assumes there is a probability our courts will rule in favor of a TRO.

“Let’s say by February, March or April, a TRO is suddenly issued, we will not have time to go manual,” he explained. “It keeps me up at night. That is my nightmare.”

The concession is this: that the Comelec may not be as transparent as they should be, and that procedural irregularities have occurred and can still occur – enough to convince a Supreme Court to risk losing an election on the basis of testimony by partisan groups with certain vested interests, enough to give a court veteran nightmares of a failed election.

Never mind that it is unreasonable for Melo to announce that there will be no time to prepare for manual elections. The elections are not negotiable. If there must be a contingency for manual counting to ensure that a new president will be sitting in Malacañang in 2010, nothing is stopping Melo from oiling the works now.

We live at a time when the phrase “twenty-ten” has been invested with almost-mythical significance, the magical moment when all heaven will descend and a rage of angels will wipe out the corrupt and the damned.

Melo says there will be a revolution without election – and I suspect it is not of the sort that ends with Sharon Cuneta singing to Kiko Pangilinan onstage.

I have learned, first, that a man accused of torture, perjury, and the wholesale murder of dozens—by no less than the Supreme Court and the United Nations—is precisely the sort of man fit to sit in the House of Representatives.

Irrelevant, for example, of the testimonies of escaped political prisoners Oscar Leuterio and Raymond Manalo—whose flight to the witness stand led to the 2008 decision of the Supreme Court that Palparan was responsible for the disappearances and subsequent rape of University of the Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño—and in spite of the fact that a commission established to look into the rash of political disappearances recommended the investigation of the Honorable Jovito Palparan, the Commission on Elections permitted the party-list group Bantay—also known as True Marcos Loyalists—to represent the “marginalized and underrepresented sector” of the military in Congress “to implement the government’s national security program.” It was permitted with knowledge that the military has never been more represented in government since martial law, with the administration actively distributing plum leadership positions to retired military men, and with the certain conviction that the group will be led by the gentleman lovingly called “Butcher” by his men.

No matter the protests, the reams of investigative reports, the witnesses, the small girl named Sugar who lost her daddy, Palparan’s inclusion into the House of Representatives establishes that “Butchers”—for as long as they have friends—are not only exempted from the rule of law, they are ushered into Congress and are called “honorable.”

I’ll tell what else I learned, this time from the behavior of the police over the death of ABS-CBN anchor Ted Failon’s wife. I have learned that it is unnecessary to have a warrant of arrest if there are enough members of the police to physically cart away whoever they consider a suspect. I have also learned that it is acceptable for police chiefs to feed false information to journalists to report to the public in order to establish that a man is guilty of killing his wife—as was in the case of Police Superintendent Franklin Moises Mabanag in telling members of the Philippine media that Ted Failon was found with scratches on his person (to indicate a fight with his wife) and that there is evidence her body was moved from his car to the bathroom. It is also appropriate, above all, to drag possible witnesses from the deathbeds of relatives if the cause is justice.

I’ll tell you the last lesson I learned, from the decision of the ladies of the Court of Appeals in their decision in favor of Lance Corporal Daniel Smith over the young woman we now know as “Nicole.” I have learned that rape is only rape if the woman is a “demure provinciana lass.” If she has, in fact, engaged in “undecorous behavior,” which may include going away for a weekend “to enjoy” with two American friends, and accepting free hotel accommodations after knowing them for the shamefully short period of “only about three months,” that woman could not have possibly been raped. And if she did protest, it is only a sudden guilt over her behavior, not because she was actually raped.

I have also discovered, from the learned ladies of the Court of Appeals that a girl cannot possibly be too drunk too refuse sexual intercourse when “she danced non-stop to the urgent beat of rock and hip-hop music” for a total of 15 minutes “without stumbling clumsily on the floor.” The court of course referred to a previously unreferred-to nugget of previous jurisprudence. It is a known fact that “when a woman is drunk, she can hardly rise, much more stand up and dance, or she would just drop. This is a common experience among Filipino girls.”

And because of all this, it is logical to conclude that any vaginal contusions a young woman may have acquired consistent with rape are in all probability not due to rape but may in fact be due to “finger grabs.” It is an important lesson to learn at this time, and one that every young Filipino woman should learn—that if one is raped, one must not speak of it unless one is truly a “demure provinciana lass,” and one must not claim to have been drunk and taken advantage of if she has succumbed to the “urgent beat” of hip hop and rock and roll more than 14 minutes. I am not certain how this jurisprudence applies for reggae or house music, and will assume that R & B is an exception, because the beat is not urgent enough for a drunken girl to fail swaying along to without dropping to the ground.

And so I express my gratitude to the men and women who determine law and order in this country. On the off chance I am raped, disappeared, or invited for questioning, I am glad to know I and the rest of my generation will be in good hands.