Lay of the land.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Conrado de Quiros

MY apologies to the local and foreign media who have been calling to ask me what I think about the political situation, whose calls I never returned. I have been swamped with work of late. Pepe Miranda's latest survey should answer their question in any case: It provides a pretty accurate picture of how things stand among the candidates. It's just a question of finding the reasons behind the results, and seeing under what conditions those results would hold.

That Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would win if you have eight or nine presidential candidates stands to reason. The popular candidates-Fernando Poe Jr. and Noli de Castro in particular-would cancel out each other and the rest of the votes would be divided among the others, leaving the one with the strongest party, organization and resources, who is the incumbent, to rule the field. That is the good news for GMA, which is the one her handlers decided to trumpet to the world. The bad news for her is that it's not going to happen. Only four, or at most five, presidential aspirants will aspire.

It's not surprising that Panfilo Lacson lags far behind in a four-cornered fight between Raul Roco, FPJ, GMA and him. That follows logically from an earlier survey by Pulse Asia that showed Lacson's ratings to not have improved despite the fact that most Filipinos found his expose on Mike Arroyo credible: The overwhelming majority thinks Mike Arroyo is Jose Pidal. That is a case of the message being credible in spite of the messenger not being so.

But that may also explain the fate of the expose itself, which, unlike the Chavit Singson expose on Erap, did not prosper. I did hear a lot of people articulate the problem at the time. If you pursue the Lacson expose, they said, you would find yourself on the opposition camp. A spurious argument, but a widely held one.

But that raises the question of why Lacson lacks credibility. The answer to that is that he labors from the disadvantages of being associated with Erap while enjoying only few of its advantages. He was Erap's chief berdugo or enforcer. A good deal of the Chinese community is thankful to him for curbing kidnapping, but a good deal of the national community detests him for adding to other forms of crime, through the PACC. His crime-fighting was very selective, and looked calculated to benefit those that could benefit him. That hasn't been lost on the public.