FERNANDO POE, JR.

FERNANDO POE, JR.

MANILA, December 15, 2004 (STAR) HERE'S THE SCORE By Teodoro C. Benigno - It is well that Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) died the way he did. He did not "rage, rage against the dying of the night" – the counsel of that quirky but talented British poet Dylan Thomas. He died silently and almost suddenly. In so doing, he seized the nation by its heart as nobody ever did before with the sole exception of Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino. It matters no longer how he died. Those medical bulletins said everything anyway, the core of which was that FPJ’s demise was caused by a massive brain stroke.

What mattered was that FPJ was universally loved.

Even his staunchest critics, those who rudely slammed the door on his presidential ambitions (and that includes myself) had to admit the man was good, kind, gentle and generous to a fault. Misguided as he might have been, lured into the ruthless jungle of politics by greedy and grasping politicians who only sought to exploit his popularity, FPJ was almost always a gentleman who walked the straight and narrow road.

And so we were all diminished by his death. And all too well do we remember John Donne who said: "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Yes, for all of us. For more than 30 years, FPJ emoted on the screen. And always, always he was the good man, the heroic man, the man of courage and virtue, the panday, the garage mechanic, the Muslim warrior, the undercover agent with a heart of gold, who went after evil and slew evil with the dash of Montezuma, most of the time with his fists which behaved with the crackling finality of a lightning storm.

In this cinematic genre, nobody beat him or even came close.

FPJ had a ruddy, almost boyish handsomeness about him, a tall longshoreman’s build, an often melancholy face that bore the sadness of having seen too much of human folly. He had a strapping gait that could swirl and unload fistic mayhem in a split-second or a gun that spat death with unerring accuracy. He had class, the way John Wayne had class. In fact, the Big Duke was cited by US Congress for his patriotic exploits in the movies. He was – to mainstream America – America.

I suggest that posthumously Malacañang and Congress should bestow a similar award on Fernando Poe Jr. He educated and exhilarated his poor audiences on the meaning of virtue and courage, on helping the impoverished and the downtrodden, on battling for human rights at ground level, on never, ever abusing his unprecedented cinema prominence and greatness for selfish, personal ends. No wonder even in the farthest hinterlands, the name of FPJ was legend. They loved him.

Not for him the welling of lust from his loins. Not for him the steamy, groaning, moaning, gasping performances in the boudoir with sultry sirens. As far as I know, FPJ never stripped naked in a bedroom to vent his lust on a waiting Nefertiti. This was never a part of his movie script, the woman’s man, the muscular stud, the lover boy, the itchy-bitchy hots for any bosomy broad that came around.

Again there, FPJ was unique.

What comes to mind however with FPJ’s death, rather the feeling that bangs at my emotions are the haunting strains of a Greek tragedy. Okay, he was loved. But maybe he didn’t have to die this early. Maybe his heart gave or his brain gave because he was badly hurt and stricken by the presidential campaign. Maybe he should have been allowed the comforts and luxury of semi- retirement after a strenuous life of hard work and harder struggle in the world of make-believe. That FPJ died too early because he drank too much is, for me, a little bit hard to accept.

I believe the man was badly and perhaps fatally wounded by his tragic defeat in the May 10 presidential elections. He figured and perhaps rightly that he was massively cheated by a government that had all the resources to do him in, that the educated citizenry, even the Church, spurned him because he didn’t have the smell of La Scala, or the accent of a proper Bostonian, or the polish of an Atenean or a La Sallite.

This caused him so much pain. Why, he must have asked, why do they treat me this way?. Isn’t every man equal before God?

In the first place, FPJ and his lovely wife Susan Roces were from the outset vividly against his entry into politics. They said no, no, repeatedly no to every offer and entreaty for him to become a presidential candidate. They knew what politics was. They knew it was a hissing snake forever coiled around dignity and decency. They knew it was a band of badly misbehaving brothers (and yes, sisters, too) whose twin gods were money and power, who took the citizenry for fools and perpetual suckers. Susan Roces then was particularly vehement when she said no. They were happy as they were. Politics was not for them. So leave them alone.

But the city slickers wouldn’t take no for an answer. The stakes were too big. Fortunes and reputations hang in the balance.

They were the Scylla and Charybdis of legend who could inveigle ships at sea to come hither with siren songs of ocean wonder and magic, and once they were within reach — sink them. They told FPJ he was the nation’s only hope, that Fate – what else? – was beckoning him to save the country, that he couldn’t turn his back on the poor and downtrodden who depended on him and him alone to extricate them from poverty and injustice.

FPJ should never have listened to them. But eventually he listened.

The slickers merchandized FPJ as a sincere and honest man which he was, a person of unequalled integrity which he was. Never mind that he was totally unprepared, didn’t have the experience, the requisite knowledge or education. They, the hustlers, would take care of that. They would attend to his every need, school him at least in the preliminary grammar of politics. What mattered, the slickers said, was that the nation would vote overwhelmingly for him, which was probably true at the time, that he would never want for expert and professional advice, which was a big, fantastic lie, that he would overcome, which was even more outrageous.

Once out in the hustings, Fernando Poe Jr. was virtually left to himself. He had to talk glibly and he couldn’t talk glibly. So he did what he could. He pieced together words and short sentences clumsily and in so doing impressed media that he was a village idiot. He was not. FPJ was just like a beached whale, out of the sea where he could really perform. He was used to acting, directing, scripting, producing, editing, slinging record-breaking films over his shoulder, not the foolish abracadabra of a scheming politician.

It was painful seeing FPJ walk into politics, let alone march into politics. It was like sending a piano tuner to wield the baton over the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. So he had to hide when presidential debates were scheduled for he would have been unrobed and not even a fig leaf would show. The saddest moment came when his Filipino citizenship was questioned. Was he a natural-born Filipino? All his life he had labored under the knowledge that he was. But the government was merciless. It pushed the envelope.

The Supreme Court finally ruled in his favor. But by this time, many of FPJ’s big financiers fled, convinced FPJ had been set up, that the level playing field had disappeared. And he would be conned. He was conned. He remained Da King, held the vote of the poor, the Great Unwashed in both hands. But how do you fight City Hall? Worse, how do you fight Malacañang?

By this time, even Hustler Incorporated realized the jig was up.

Fernando Poe Jr., convinced that he had won, and he swore he had the figures, hied over to Mindanao and announced his triumph. He issued sounds he would not only protest but summon his legions to stage massive street demonstrations. The slickers knew when they were beaten, realized they could not beat the Establishment, of which they were a part. The drums went up, the bugles blared. The Church, the big barons of business and finance denied in full-page advertisements FPF had been cheated. By gad, he was cheated!

But the gods had spoken. The massive street demonstrations never materialized. There was one, a little piglet of about three-thousand at the Quezon City rotonda. Armida Siquion-Reyna, an FPJ devotee armed with guts and guts alone, braved the phalanx of riot police. She mounted a soap-box to launch a tirade against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the government. She had all the right, too.

The police opened up with water cannon. Awash, awry, and assaulted, Armida fled with her minions, satisfied that with all her gab, she couldn’t stop pylons of water ruining all her make-up. It was a sad and humiliating end to what had earlier been a glorious FPJ campaign. The police had earlier intercepted FPJ at the rotonda, virtually manacled him to a waiting shed. Where were his big advisers, his prominent consiglieri who promised they would be with him every inch of the way?

They were gone. Poor FPJ. He must have viewed all this with a sinking and sickening heart. He had fought his fight to the very end. Now he was wise to the iniquity of Philippine politics. Now he had been callously betrayed. Now, the cold worm’s entrails of betrayal dangled from his mouth. And there they were to remain until he breathed his last.

Reported by: Sol Jose Vanzi

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