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.

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.

According to a Vera Files report, in the three years he served as vice governor, Mikey Arroyo should only have earned a gross annual income of P634,725. “Despite having declared no real property or business interests while still vice governor, even after his marriage to Angela, save for P2.1 million of unspecified shares of stock in 2001 and 2002 and about P3 million in bank deposits, he managed to acquire by 2004 a house in Lubao, Pampanga, worth P4 million and a house in La Vista in Quezon City for P8 million. He did not report having borrowed money or incurred other liabilities before he was elected congressman.”

On the sudden increase in his assets, Mikey said, “(It’s not) ill-gotten, hindi naman kalakihan ’yan (It’s not too big).” It is curious what the Arroyo son deems “big.”

In the controversial GMA7 interview, University of the Philippines Economics professor Solita Monsod interrogated the smiling congressman. He claimed his SALNs were self-explanatory—except by himself, apparently—and that he, any and all individuals who refused to accept his contradicting statements were in fact politically-motivated. It is the line the administration has long been taking, and one that is the period at the end of every failed justification for overspending, political crimes, corruption, and possible chest implants. The good congressman challenged Monsod to sue him in court if she was unsatisfied with his explanations. What was stunning about the Mikey interview was the fact that he had allowed himself to be interviewed, a departure from his mother’s patent refusal to answer media questions and to refuse all media interviews.

Mikey claims he appeared at the “Unang Hirit” interview because he had nothing to hide. As he obviously has very much to hide—although he seems stunningly inept at keeping them hidden—his live interview is a manifestation of the length and breadth of the administration’s impunity. A congressman can announce he is a moron on national television, confirm insinuations of corruption, act like a spoiled 12-year-old, and still get away with it because everyone knows Mommy is behind him.

“I have all the good intentions and it must have shown in my appearance, as many friends texted me or called me after the program saying it is the right and brave thing to do,” he said after he was asked about his television performance. Mikey needs new friends, that much is clear. He blames his “inability” to cope with the interview to Monsod’s questioning. “I respect her, and though her questioning had made me look bad or stupid, I guess very few people can actually really stand to questioning on live TV before millions of people especially early in the morning,” he said. He claims the interview may have given the “wrong perception” of him. Mikey was weighed and found wanting, trust him to say it was the fault of the weighing scale.

Weeks after the Vera Files exploded the issue of the Arroyos’ American holdings, and after media organizations followed their lead, very little has come of the contradicting explanations the brothers have offered. Mikey himself has done little but present platitudes. He challenges the public to sue him. He is glad for the case filed with the Ombudsman—and well he should be, as she is the same woman whose name was included in the original list of government officials that followed Her Excellency Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to gorge themselves on New York fine dining. Mikey claims the property in the United States is not in his family’s name—Vera Files says it is in his wife’s. He says he grew rich on wedding presents and campaign contributions, income that he did not declare.

In any other democracy, this would end in resignation and recrimination. In this country, it ends with a sound byte from a smiling congressman.

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.

Questions as to the source of funds for the $20,000 Le Cirque dinner from militant group Bayan resulted in a demonization in the grand tradition of Major General Jovito Palparan. All criticism is “agitation propaganda.”

The dissent, says Remonde, “is the fruit of a poisonous tree” from a communist organization “dedicated to the overthrow of dedicated governments.”

This is the brilliant reasoning of the gentleman who refuses interviews with “I only speak on media issues” – perhaps the man with the mistaken belief that a press secretary speaks of the press, instead of to the press.

Presidential Economic Spokesman Gary Olivar shakes his head after his convoluted explanation over why the excess spending is justified. “I don’t know why people don’t understand this.”

At the risk of being called a propagandist, an anarchist, or a card-carrying member of the New People’s Army, I will have to admit my inferior intelligence to Mr. Olivar, and say that I do not understand the explanations forwarded by the charming gentlemen of the Presidential Press Office.

I would be very grateful if anyone could explain why Deputy Presidential Spokesman Anthony Golez claims that criticism makes it appear that “the leader of our nation is somehow not good enough to be hosted in the best hotels, or chauffeured around town, whenever he or she travels abroad as the representative of one of the 15 largest countries in the world.”

Perhaps Mr. Golez forgets that “one of the 15 largest countries in the world” is also one of the poorest. “We have increasingly become a global community,” says Remonde in justifying spending for the US trip.

It is that increasingly global community that will not be fooled by the best hotels and Le Cirque dinners. I am not certain what we are attempting to prove to the United States and the global community by spending P6 million on tips to bellboys and waiters.

If it is that we are wealthy and stable, all it takes is a minute on Google to know just how desperately poor the majority of this country is. All this posturing proves is that we have a President who cares far more about the trappings of success than the state of the national treasury – not precisely the safest country to invest in.

And yet she deserves it, they all deserve it, says the gentlemen of the press office. No matter if foreign travels exceeded its own budget by P1.2 billion – it is within the law to take from the contingency fund anyway. For as long as the benefits outweigh the costs, there is no problem. In answer to a reporter’s question – Does this mean the President can spend as much as she wants if there are benefits? – Remonde says that is basic management.

We are “still ahead of the game,” says Olivar. In the US trip alone, says Remonde, the President’s efforts exceeded P6 billion in income for the country.

There is a shopping list of successes. The President secured P198 million in the Veteran’s Equity Fund – a fund that was approved February, and was the result of almost half a century of struggle for Philippine veterans. The President brought in P429 million in defense and military assistance – the same P429 million already disbursed in the last 10 years and certainly not forthcoming because of the recent US trip.

The President brought in P212 million in US aid to Mindanao – the same P212 million budget stretched across 2001-2008. He talks about a bill that will provide the country with P2.2 billion but has barely passed first reading in the US Congress. They talk about “diplomatic gains.” They talk about OFWs who are “of course benefited” by GMA’s presence.

There is a danger to arguing with numbers – unlike words, they are more difficult to subject to the comfortable vagueness of rhetoric. It does not stop Olivar from trying. “This is a mishmash of different sources.” His purpose is simply to “give an idea,” in “an attempt to put order in the wild charges. “Six billion, says Remonde, “in the US trip alone.”

That, says a disdainful Olivar, is worth 312,000 dinners at Le Cirque. The rise in foreign travel spending – last year, the allocated budget went from P130 million to P170 million – is justified by an increase in revenue. “We had a windfall.”

If this is Remonde’s “basic management,” it’s stunning why our debt hasn’t ballooned to twice its size. The benefits do not only have to outweigh the cost, the entire cost has to result in the benefit to justify it.

There is no reason to believe it is lavish spending that locks bilateral trade treaties, and no reason not to expect the same result with a smaller contingent and lower spending. But irrelevant of the pack of lies and strings of inconsistencies, this is what is forgotten in all of Olivar’s and Remonde’s “mishmash”: there is no such thing as the President “deserving” to “spend as much as she wants,” simply because of an imaginary P6 billion.

It is her duty to bring in that P6 billion, we are not compelled to either reward her or forgive her for the waste of taxpayers’ money.

When Speaker Prospero Nograles has the effrontery to bring his wife to the US trip and say he did not know who was spending for it, when Representative Bienvenido Abante announces he deserves to pay for his trip out of his annual congressional travel allocation (“because I met with some Fil-Am communities”) and when an undersecretary of finance says it is no problem to overspend by a billion pesos because she took it out of the presidential contingency fund, it smacks not of insensitivity, but an absolute apathy for the millions of uneducated and underfed citizens whose lives could become monumentally better by one less useless congressman touring Washington in a government-paid limousine.

Olivar’s projected P6 billion, and his revenue windfall, can do very little in the face of a PhilHealth that has announced the possibility of bankruptcy in 2016 due to an unpaid P19.2-billion government debt.

The gentlemen of the Malacañang press office are unhappy with the criticism. They say this made a mockery of the country in the international community. I suspect these gentlemen are giving the local press and the opposition too much credit. After all, we never ate in Le Cirque.

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.

Growing up, I knew I was different from other American kids. When I was older and had a chance to return to the Philippines, I noticed I was different here too. I didn’t have a vivid memory of the Philippines, but I remember questioning why we had to be separated – why we had to leave and immigrate. I wanted to find out more about the world: why there was poverty, why there was inequality. If you asked me what I wanted to be then, I’ll say I knew I wanted to do something that would be important, that would make – not necessarily an impact – but something that would make me feel that I was doing something good in the world.

I was already an activist, but I started being involved with Philippine issues much later on. I’ve always felt close to health care issues, and one of the places I remember going to was Payatas. The Philippines I saw in Payatas was very different from the Philippines I saw when my relatives took me around. Ever since that trip I’ve been going back and forth the United States and the Philippines for missions. Being in the Philippines and having that experience means you can’t ignore the human rights aspect of it. People who want to change what’s going on become targets. Many of them are killed, or are disappeared. I started getting involved in human rights missions.

I was in La Paz, Tarlac on May 19, 2009. We had been doing health care surveys in the community, and had slept over. We were just there resting that morning, talking, watching a noontime show.

We heard them at the door.

They are telling us to open it. There is a man wearing a white shirt he is the only one without a bonnet he is telling us to open the door and the door is forced open and they come through the front door come through the back door. There are about 15 men and they have long firearms and bonnets on and they try to push us down on the floor with our faces to the ground. I keep saying no and they push me and start to punch me and they force me to my knees and shove my face to the ground. And then I see Juanito and John Edward and everyone in the house being forced up. And the men tape their mouths, tie blindfolds over eyes. I start resisting. I keep saying my name as hard and as loud as I can. “Melissa Roxas. Melissa Roxas!” I keep thinking, I don’t want to go with these people.

They started dragging me and there was gravel and my nose was bleeding after they punched me and I saw the van, the van outside, there outside, and I put my foot against the side of the van while they were pushing me in. I was doing everything I could because I didn’t want to get in that van because I knew if I got in that van – I just didn’t want to get in the van. I kept yelling my name. They couldn’t get the blindfold on me because I kept ripping it off. They pushed me into the van and handcuffed me and that was the only time they could blindfold me but they couldn’t put the tape on my mouth because I was vomiting. They forced my head down because they didn’t want me to see outside. We drove. And I remember thinking that I didn’t want to panic. I had to remember everything, to keep track of time in my own head. I couldn’t see and I was facing the floor and I was vomiting. Then we were pausing. Gravel. Some kind of road and there was a pause, then the van stopped. Then I thought: This is it they’re going to kill us, this is it. They drove a little. Stopped. I thought the same thing. They told me to step down.

They took me into a cramped cell. They didn’t feed me for the first two days, had me drink only once or twice during that time. I just wanted to not lose it. I was trying very hard to keep track. I kept thinking that I had to think and I was terrified and I would peek under my blindfold and I knew there was someone watching.

The interrogation started early. It was almost round the clock. They took me out of the jail cell to that little place just before you reach the screen door. That was where they beat me. That was where they strangled me. They asked me many things. They were accusing me of being a member of the CPP-NPA and I kept saying I was not. I kept saying, My name is Melissa Roxas, and I want access to a lawyer. I want to talk to a lawyer, that’s all I kept saying. They kept trying to tell me I was part of the CPP-NPA. And then I kept saying, just kept saying, kept saying my name and that I want to see a lawyer. And they said even if you’re here a year you’ll never see a lawyer. We got you clean, no one knows you’re here. You’ll never see a lawyer.

The interrogation never ended. It’s hard to say what the worst was, because everything was worst for me because every minute I was there I thought I was going to die. When they were beating me they put a plastic bag over my head and they put on a first one and then a second one and all I kept thinking was I’m going to die and all I saw was white and I was losing my breath and I remember having, thinking – couldn’t breathe. They started telling me that they were just tools of God to make people return into the fold of the law. And I told them that God can never do that, can never torture people. And I said the only people who can do that are demons. And I told them I didn’t believe them.

I don’t know exactly why I was released. While I was with them I eventually told them that I was a US citizen. Maybe they were afraid of that. They kept telling me, we’re friends right? We’re friends right? You won’t tell anyone what happened?

I don’t want it to happen ever again to anyone, and I want the Philippine government and the Philippine military to be held accountable for what they did to me, and what they are doing to other people. They can’t keep denying it. I am still afraid. Every day, I’m still afraid. But I know what the truth is. I know what happened. I know what I heard. And I know what I saw. And I want to testify.

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.”

So says Bessie Buencamino, of Mahal ko, Bayan ko.

(MKBK), an organization composed of “God-centered, enlightened, compassionate, nation-loving people” that “seeks to disseminate correct values.”

Their “anyone good for the country” appears to be solidly President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Buencamino is a classmate of President Arroyo, along with the group’s convenor, Doctor Evelyn Kilayko. These are the same women behind the 2005 advertisements splashed across national newspapers that announced “We prefer GMA to chaos” at the height of the Hello Garci scandal.

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism reported that the ads accounted for 12 percent of all the political ads for this period, making the group the top advertiser with spending of over P3 million. Last year, Kilayko’s group placed full-page newspaper ads calling for “truth not rage” at the height of the $329.48-million ZTE broadband deal controversy.

In the last few weeks, the “Mahal Ko, Bayan Ko” movement placed ads in major Metro Manila newspapers calling for a shift in government, just as the House of Representatives decided to convene itself into a constituent assembly.

MKBK has a core group of 30 moral and upright citizens. They want Charter change, and they want it now. The presidential form of government, says Buencamino, inevitably “breeds megacorruption.” Asked by ANC anchor Tony Velasquez whether she was implying the current leaders within the presidential system were corrupt – or perhaps megacorrupt – Buencamino takes offense. “Do not put words in my mouth.”

It is a stunning sort of argument to change an entire system of government. If the presidential system is the culprit behind billions of pesos of corruption, it is a marvel why MKBK refuses to admit there is corruption in the government beyond Buencamino’s mysterious “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Perhaps the good people behind the proposal for Charter change do not understand precisely why they are being painted as rogues and thieves. House Speaker Prospero Nograles admitted that House Resolution 1109 is “generic” with “no specific proposal.” The rush to pass it becomes all the more suspicious, one year before changing an unpopular president. Speaker Nograles – who mistakenly claimed that the voting on the constituent assembly was transparent simply because it was televised – himself is a self-proclaimed advocate of federalism. MKBK believes that a parliamentary system is “the lasting solution to the perennial problem of monumental corruption spawned by the very system we seek to change.” Other proponents claim all they wish for is to create a test case for the Supreme Court to rule on whether the House of Representatives and Senate should vote as a whole or separately to amend the Constitution.

I have nothing against changing the Charter – when I know what is being changed, when I believe the changes are for the national good, when I trust the motives of the people behind these changes. What is offensive is the idea that proponents believe the public will go along with giving Congress a blank check. Quezon Representative Danilo Suarez, a member of Kampi, said that the resolution merely “tells the senators and congressman that let’s sit down and discuss what changes should be done in the Constitution, that’s it.” The rush and railroading in the House is not explained by a need to “sit down and discuss,” a need that can easily be fulfilled after 2010, with a new president holding a new mandate. It does not explain why the gentlemen of the House have to seek separate senatorial approval to change the name of a road in Caloocan, but believe a whole system of government can change while the Senate is forced to sit helplessly by.

HR 1109 was an insult to the national intelligence, and the patronizing advertisements and interviews tossed out by groups supporting this version of Charter change only cement their disdain for democratic institutions. This is a country whose leaders have failed not only the people but the system. HR 1109 is a manifestation of how even the fundamentals of the presidential system – the check and balance of the House and the Senate – can be ignored if the men in power are ruthless enough. The same ruthless leaders will run.

MKBK’s beloved parliament, the same corrupt jackasses will split the profits of a federal system if the Charter changes at the expense of damaged institutions. Yet another Villar will skip his own ethics hearing, yet another Revilla will rail against some vague notion of immorality, there will be water-tossing and pork-barrel snatching, and the grand carnival will go on, only it will have a different name.

There will be no attempt at term extensions, says the administration. I doubt if even its spokespeople believe themselves. If elections are allowed in 2010, and a new president decides that the presidential system has failed, if debates in Congress are allowed to flourish, if there is public discourse and faith in the leadership, then there is no reason why Charter change cannot happen. There is a time, a place, and a process, all of which the Constitution laid out in 1986.

Proponents say the time is now – “If not now, when?” – because this is the only administration that will permit immediate change in the Charter. Perhaps they should ask why.

2010 allows that flicker of possibility that there is one man – or woman – the nation can trust enough to support. I have little faith in leaders and heroes, but there is no other time than 2010 when that leader is needed, if only to force out the dirt of the last administration. This time, it must be the right choice. These next few months, as so many say, will be the tipping point, the moment that will decide whether the country Hillary Clinton so delightedly congratulated “as a beacon of democratic values to the world” will reach back for its independence or toss what’s left to a gang of thieves.