Let me tell you what goes on in my mind late in the evening at the end of a tough campaign day waged in 100 degree (37 Celsius) weather, nutrition complements of Jollibee, fresh running water available only once during the entire 14 hour period with of course no soap…what am I doing here? Far from my wife and daughters, my friends, my books and my gin. How my life has changed!

But this campaign has allowed me to see things that would never have been available at youtube. Those of us who live in Metro Manila should be required to take a field trip to the poor areas of Mindanao and Visayas. Every public official must be made to witness and subsequently experience the deplorable living conditions that result from their leadership.

Things are not going to get better. We are not planning sufficiently for the future. When we allocate from the budget 28% to debt service and 1% to health and 11% towards education we betray our national inferiority complex. How else do you explain giving the highest priority towards satisfying our creditors at the expense of crippling successive generations?

Let me show you why this is a “killer” policy. If we were just to cut interest payments by one percentage point and move this amount (approximately PhP12 billion) to health, we would be doubling our budget for healthcare. To illustrate, every single day, 75 Filipinos die from tuberculosis. If we were to make widely available the 4 anti-TB medications (INH, pyrazinamide, ethambutol and rifampin) at a cost of PhP2 billion, we would potentially cut in half the mortality rate of tuberculosis, 13,000 less deaths each year. Can anyone clinically dispute the cost-effectiveness of such a policy?

I have heard a lot of talk and a lot of promises from all these traditional politicians and nobody ever makes a disclaimer that she or he has been around all these years and is precisely part of the problem. Why should the electorate expect them to undergo a conversion during this brief campaign season? The hour is late.

Am I a glutton for punishment, or what? ANC called and informed me they had a vacancy in the Senatorial Forum and asked if I was interested to fill-in. Considering that I appeared only 2 weeks ago and found the experience quite anxiety-provoking, to put it in mild terms, I readily volunteered. Media exposure has been hard to come by because of our lack of money. Many radio stations ask for “packaging fees” and some of them even invite you to their shows only to be informed a few minutes before the interview that “permission” has to be sought from the mother station (going rate is about PhP 1000 a minute for poorly funded candidates).

Face to face with the jet-black aperture of a tv camera, live and with a nationwide audience of sofa-quarterbacks will convince you why there are so very few takers in Philippine politics. For a newcomer, it is a terrifying experience, more so when you are pitted against people who do this for a living. I psyche myself with the thought that not a single one of these traditionalists can distinguish a gastroscope from a colonoscope. I am the interloper in this arena.

I wasn’t surprised with the conduct of the forum. Rehearsed answers supplied by researchers, carefully crafted phrases in the vernacular—to a proposition that totally missed the point. We could have gone on and on dreaming and imagining the whole week and creatively hatch plans and programs for health care in this matter but not come up with a way to pay for all these musings. I tried my best to focus on this most important consideration. When will we summon enough national will to decide on what priorities truly matter?

I would have appreciated a little more than the 8.5 minutes they allowed us because how substantive can you be given a subject so broad and critical with that little time? I had to gloss over some of the questions and emphasize certain points because I knew these opportunities were rare for non-traditional candidates like me. So pardon my stutter and forgive me for being repetitive. This is one reason why we should all become involved in these political exercises. We can’t continue to keep on letting these guys get away with it by default.

People, apart from donating small amounts of money have also been singing for us. In Cagayan de Oro we were serenaded with "Stout-Hearted Men", a Hammerstein song from the Broadway musical, "The New Moon":

You who have dreams,
If you act, they will come true.
To turn your dream to a fact It's up to you.
If you have the soul and the spirit,
Never fear it, you'll see it through.
Hearts can inspire other hearts with their fire,
For the strong obey when a strong man
Shows them the way.

Give me some men who are stout-hearted men
Who will fight for the right they adore.
Start me with ten, who are stout-hearted men
And I'll soon give you ten thousand more.

Oh! Shoulder to shoulder and bolder and bolder
They grow as they go to the fore!
Then there's nothing in the world can halt or mar a plan,
When stout-hearted men can stick together man to man!

32 odd days left before election day. Suddenly the Kapatiran 3 are now turning down invitations from tv interviews because of scheduling conflicts. Attended a lunch forum with journalists and was asked, as usual how we felt about our “unwinnable” status. Some people just don’t get it: we are doing this for the country, how, in what way can we lose? At the end of the deal, this “tight” crowd actually passed the hat and presented us with a modest contribution. This phenomenon happens almost always wherever we go, before priests and nuns, students, business professionals…just like a strong breeze to whip-up flagging sails.

I have seen so much suffering and so much corruption these last 8 weeks and I find my resolve not to compromise become even stronger. More than ever, I reject corruption, poverty and violence. I am full of hope going into the homestretch.

April 7, 1978, 29 years ago today was when a highly successful noise barrage roused a fearful nation. Ferdinand Marcos had planned to hold “elections” for his rubber-stamp parliament in order to cloak his dictatorship with a mantle of legitimacy. Only Marcos candidates were allowed to campaign and every restriction was placed to prevent the opposition from being seen or heard. Come to think of it, those were pretty long odds. People were not allowed to peaceful assembly. The press was tightly controlled. It was a miracle that made millions of people go out of their homes at the appointed hour and make as much noise as they could with whatever implements they had. I was 15 years old and that night instilled in me the faith that we Filipinos had it inside us to fight against long odds. This marked the debut of Laban (Lakas ng Bayan) and the names in that slate will remain with me for as long as I live: Ninoy Aquino, Jerry Barican, Alex Boncayao, Feli Cabigao, Juan David, Jaime Ferrer, Neptali Gonzales, Teofisto Guingona, Trinidad Herrera, Priming de Leon, Chito Lucero, Ernesto Maceda, Tony Martinez, Ramon Mitra, Aquilino Pimentel, Charito Planas, Napoleon Rama, Anding Roces, Soc Rodrigo, Ernesto Rondon and Emmanuel Santos.

I remember writing all 21 names by hand on newsprint and asked total strangers to vote for them. The outcome was never in question but what was important was joining a movement that dared to stand up to an all-powerful regime.

8 long years would pass before we would wrest free from Marcos but on April 7, 1978, deafening sound turned to seed.