The elephant in the room

“CAN SOMEBODY please tape the conversation?” said one netizen on the presidential dinner at Bahay Pangarap. The sarcasm is understandable. People do not see those dinners as the way to choose a presidential candidate. They are hidden from their view. They have no participation in them. By insisting on these silly dinners, President Aquino may just have lost another round of public support. So will it also hurt the chances of Grace Poe?

Public consensus is strong that the reason Poe is topping the surveys is that people do not see her as a traditional politician. These polls may be a sign of public fatigue from dirty politics. If we look very closely at the two other main contenders, it is not difficult to see how they have epitomized traditional politics.

Those who say that Grace Poe has no experience must think again. What experience does the other two contenders have as an edge over her? Jejomar Binay represents a dynastic family that is widely believed to have enriched itself from the coffers of wealthy Makati. In social media, the possibility of a Binay win in 2016 is almost always followed by “God forbid!”

Mar Roxas, on the other hand, has served three presidents in various Cabinet capacities. Why is he at the bottom of the heap? Someone calls it “tenacious timidity.” He had several chances to denounce wrongdoing in the Aquino administration but did not. He is instead perceived as an abettor. That certainly is not a healthy perception. We are not even talking of his oligarchic background that one often hears from people on the street. Would that be the experience one hopes Poe would have?

Poe does not exemplify the politics of Binay and Roxas. That to us should be the simplest explanation for her phenomenal surge in the surveys. If our survey readings are correct, experience would have nothing to do with our selection of the next president. It has been said that President Aquino can do a Cory—endorse a nonpolitician, like she did with Fidel Ramos in 1991, who has no experience in an elective post. In that sense then, Ramos indeed was the contrast of the wheeler-dealer politics of Ramon Mitra.

But the parallel, if at all it is, ends there.

Poe was elected No. 1 senator. Her topping the surveys has been consistently phenomenal among all polling bodies. There was no such phenomenon that presaged in 1991 the Ramos presidency.

There are those who also believe that the presidential dinners are a way for Mr. Aquino to forge ties with the next president. Meaning, to evade what probably are his own morose visions of himself in jail and in a wheelchair come 2016. This is a possibility (the visions and the jail). In which case, if this public perception is correct, then Poe had better distance herself from Mr. Aquino now for it may only compromise her commitment to the rule of law and undermine her integrity.

The only way that Poe would be consistent with the public clamor for her to join the presidential race is to run independent of Mr. Aquino’s Liberal Party. We must begin to forget daang matuwid because there really was no such thing in the public mind. That will free her from the baggage of being answerable for the controversies that now hound the Aquino presidency, its constitutional infringements no less, and its not-so-hidden tendencies to use the pork barrel as grease for political patronage. Poe does not have such stain. She must also bear in mind that the public is not so stupid as to ignore these controversies.

Poe has already started on the right foot with her upfront handling of the Mamasapano hearings in the Senate. The issue will not die down until the public gets its well-deserved answers. Perhaps it will only be under a Poe presidency that someone will finally reveal the truth that indeed two American servicemen died in Mamasapano. Plus the Pandora’s box of other secrets that only Mr. Aquino and the rightfully-dismissed-from-service Alan Purisima know about. There certainly are other sources of reliable information. The regional hospital in Cotabato City is one.

These presidential dinners only confirm to us that indeed Mar Roxas is a sure liability to President Aquino’s party. It is therefore unfair to ask Poe to set her sight lower and direct it at the vice presidency. She has assets more valuable than being just a mere deodorizer for Roxas. These dinners are a sign of the Liberal Party’s desperation. Poe is not in dire straits. She is riding a groundswell of support. She was “out of place” in that dinner.

Teddy Boy Locsin’s television editorial was straightforward. He said Poe must seize the moment now. Not in 2016. In 2016, she would have become a has-been, very much like what Mar Roxas has become after six years. Mar will never become president—not anymore. Would the honest gentleman, new Commission on Elections Chair Andy Bautista succumb to attempts to rig the polls? I think the Aquino administration has appointed the wrong person to be the Comelec chair because Bautista is known to be a man of integrity.

Once Grace Poe declares her candidacy, and many hope it will be soon, you can be sure there will be “bleeding” from the ranks of the Liberal Party. What’s the problem with that? One can already see a mad diaspora toward Poe’s coalition. One indication: the wealthy congressman with politician-parents in Poe’s company at the T’nalak Festival in Koronadal City.

Social perceptions are important in Philippine politics. Poe can let the law run its course on Mr. Aquino who has no choice but to face the judgment not just of history but also of the courts.

For in those ridiculous dinners by the Pasig, Mr. Aquino is actually the elephant in the room, which Grace Poe must avoid with a 10-foot pole.