Binay or Duterte but never Poe

By Al S. Mendoza

 

RON de los Reyes has just told me a story worth including in Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not.”

“You know what, Almate?” he said to me.  “Grace Poe leads in many surveys and it makes me wonder.”

Why do you say that?

“Because everywhere I go, I ask people…”

I cut him down—“What kind of people?”

“Fish vendors in market places, barkers and drivers in jeepney terminals, waiters and waitresses in restaurants, sales ladies in malls, beauticians and manicurists in beauty parlors—I ask them all the time…”

What do you ask them, Ronmate?

“I ask them, ‘Who will you vote for president on May 9?’”

And their answer?

“I have to be honest,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” I said.  “You’ve been very honest to me all these years.”

“The answer I get would either be Binay or Duterte,” Ron said.  “I have yet to hear someone answer, ‘Poe.’”

Really?

“Yes, Almate,” he said.  “It’d always be either Binay or Duterte.  That’s why I wonder why Poe keeps leading in the surveys.”

Ron is a fellow journalist who writes a column for Pahayagang Malaya, the newspaper founded by the late press freedom fighter Joe Burgos, a dear friend of mine.

I call Ron Ronmate because we were roommates while covering a motoring event a while back in Currimao, Ilocos Norte.

We actually had a room each in a hotel by the bay.

But while killing a whiskey bottle in the dead of night, our host told of a ghost story so scary that Ron and I ended up sharing one bed—his bed.

(Don’t even think of who’s the LGBT between us, OK?  Secret.)

The room had a large mirror facing our bed.

Superstition prevailed: The man in the mirror at midnight might not be Ronmate or me and so, I covered it with my blanket.

Ronmate and I didn’t sleep a wink that night.

The next morning, I started calling Ron Ronmate and he calling me Almate.

“So, who are you rooting for, Ronmate?”

And he said, “No final decision yet.”

Why?

“After the two remaining presidential debates, I will decide,” he said.  “I know Duterte won the first one and if he should win even one of the last two debates, he gets my vote.”

How about Poe?  They say she is from our beloved Pangasinan and so why don’t you vote for her?

“Of course, she is not a Pangasinense,” Ronmate said.  “Big, big lie. Her adoptive father, FPJ, yes.  But not her.  Isn’t FPJ your sort of townmate, Almate?”

Yeah.  A bit.

FPJ used to own the prime lot in the plaza of my beloved Mangatarem, where a Jollibee now stands.

Another of FPJ’s piece of land, as I said, is located near our house on Gen. Luna St. (now owned by the still beautiful Tia Erling Gomez-Guico).

“Why don’t you buy that land from your Tia Erling?” Ronmate said.

Would love to but I don’t have the money.

“If you want I could lend you money,” he said.

I laughed loud.

By the way, Ronmate is from Lingayen, but because he grew up in Manila, he couldn’t speak our language.

The only Pangasinan he knows is, “Balbaleg so paltak mo!”

(For your comments and reactions, please email to: punch.sunday@gmail.com)

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