MANNY VILLAR HAD SOME INTERESTING things to say in his proclamation rally last Sunday night. Standing in front of his family?s old and crumbling house in Tondo, he said in Tagalog: ?This is the place where I started to dream. This is where I would like to realize my vision for our country, to achieve the goal of a revolution against poverty? Next time a candidate makes another promise, ask him: ?What kind of changes are you going to make? Do you understand the poor people?s needs???

The rally drew a throng and dazzled with fanfare, hoopla, and, well, money. Most of the NP senatorial bets were there, Willie Revillame was there, and Dolphy and Bata Reyes were there. Dolphy said gently in Tagalog: ?When they said that someone from Tondo was running for president, I said, ?We need to help him. Don?t you want someone from Tondo to become president???

I love Dolphy and do not mind if he makes a buck or two anywhere to make his life a little easier. Heaven knows we owe him so much for making our lives a little more bearable all these years. Life hasn?t altogether been kind to him, he can do with some slack. Who knows? Maybe he means it entirely, having no small fondness for home or hearth.

I myself would like nothing better than for someone from Tondo to become president?if he were made of the stuff of Andres Bonifacio. That of course was the not very subliminal pitch of the rally: This was the birthplace of Bonifacio, the plebeian who sparked a revolution against the rich and powerful. The idea of a campaign starting on that note is brilliant. The message is grand, the thrust powerful. It has only one problem: The messenger.

The distance between Andres Bonifacio and Manuel Villar is not a crevice, it is a chasm. Granting that both of them came from humble beginnings?though Villar?s claim hasn?t gone unchallenged, if beginnings include extension by marriage; there is a chasm too between Cynthia and Gregoria?then that is pretty much the only thing they have in common. Their trajectory is different. Bonifacio went on to try to lift his fellow poor from their lot, suffering grief, privation and death, the last ironically enough not at the hands of his enemies but of his presumed friends. Villar went on to lift himself from his lot by means his erstwhile fellow poor may not appreciate, obtaining wealth and power beyond belief, and a new life, the last after being found innocent of wrongdoing at the Senate by his proclaimed friends.

There is in fact someone today who echoes Bonifacio?s heroism and revolutionary spirit, but he is not a candidate. He is Efren Peñaflorida, who recently won the CNN Hero of the Year Award. Peñaflorida drives home further the difference in trajectories between Bonifacio and Villar.

Like Bonifacio, Peñaflorida came from impoverished beginnings, the son of a tricycle driver and a vendor, born and raised not in Tondo but along a tambakan. Refusing to make poverty an excuse for failure, he worked hard to improve himself. And then completely like Bonifacio, he decided when the opportunity for personal advancement, or a comfortable life, presented itself to work instead to uplift the lot of his fellow poor. A decision, or commitment, that meant grief, privation and at the very least remaining poor. The kareton classroom, for all its quietness and modesty, is no less revolutionary than the Katipunan.

Frankly, I do not know what madness persuaded Villar to make rich vs. poor his antidote to Noynoy Aquino?s spontaneous storyline of good vs. evil. Probably the same madness that persuaded Ferdinand Marcos to use rich vs. poor as an antidote to Noynoy?s mother?s, Cory?s, even more spontaneous storyline of good vs. evil. Marcos added to his theme the subplot of city vs. countryside, the city presumably being the home of the cantankerous elite who were for Cory, and the countryside that of the ?silent majority,? the teeming poor, who were for him. Marx did say history has a way of appearing twice, first as tragedy and second as farce.

The problem of course is that it strains credulity, to say the least, to envision Marcos, and now Villar, as embodying the poor or championing the poor. It cannot help that Villar?s current senatorial roster includes Bongbong Marcos and Miriam Defensor-Santiago. The first is a throwback to martial law, the second raises the question of how someone who has shown no loyalty to anybody can possibly show loyalty to the poor.

The one who once captured the imagination of the poor was Erap, who had a formidable vehicle to drive home that figment of the imagination. It wasn?t his jeep, it was his movies. The ones in particular that showed him to be of the poor, by the poor, and for the poor. The masa?s disillusionment with him cannot augur well for future appropriators of that role. Villar clearly doesn?t see the sublime irony in his telling his audience that the next time someone promises them something, they should ask him first if he truly understands the poor.

The medium is the message. In the end what resolutely subverts the content of the NP?s message is its form, or style, a form or style that revolves around a concept that sounds nearly exactly?or perfectly exactly, as local pronunciations go?as the name of its standard bearer: money. How can you be for the poor if your whole campaign reeks of rich? A fact that is not only not hidden from view but outstandingly advertised, its pitch to all comers, young and old, rich or poor, being its ample financial attractions.

Dolphy had a more brilliant line before. ?Madaling tumakbo, e, kung manalo?? (Easy to run, but what if you win?) That might well prove to be the epitaph of a campaign that, in ways that go beyond its reckoning, is proving to be magnificently:

Poor.