GMA has reason to get mad at Joe Pidal.

To deflect suspicion that the secret bank accounts are the repository of the heist from the most expensive boulevard in the world, the Dioskupo Napakamahal Avenue in the reclaimed Manila Bay area, Mike Arroyo volunteered an admission that the monies in the deposit account came from campaign contributions in the 1998 presidential elections where GMA ran successfully as vice president.

Because of that open confession, the First Gentleman tacitly admitted that the reports submitted before the Commission on Elections relative to the election expenses were understated or inaccurate.

Or knowing that GMA could easily beat Ed Angara in the hustling, why spend good money when victory was in sight anyway. Never mind those blood sucking local leaders. Let them spend their own money. They were all in the running nevertheless so why do they have to depend on GMA the candidate, whose triumph was already in the bag? No amount of super zealous vigilance could change the avalanche of votes. There is therefore no harm if we could pocket the savings from Messrs. Lim, Ong, Go, Teng, Sy, Tan and myriad others sporting monosyllabic surnames. The savings, mind you, are not patsies. They are in multi-millions of pesos. This early, Mr. Pidal’s eyes were already fixed in 2004. Then, he didn’t see any viable rivals against his doubtless popular better-half. But with his wife trailing in the surveys, he is poised to puke even his innards just to ensure her re-election. The upset distaff is looking forward to it as sweet revenge, thus the change of mind of running again.

Remember the presidential candidate in 1992 whose husband was a middle-level employee in a notorious government agency known for its corruption. Not in his lifetime could he earn millions of pesos to backstop his wife’s (who was a former trial judge) presidential campaign.

Yet, the candidate surprised everyone when she was able to post in cash the P50M supersedeas bond prerequisite in a presidential election protest. Not even her rival managed to register wonderment in the protestant’s financial liquidity post election, as he was himself wallowing in excess funds right after the cyclic taxing exercise. Thereafter, the lady candidate went on to move her residence from a middle-class subdivision to a well-appointed village openly bragging that the new house costs pesos in multi-digits. Her first senatorial foray was a walk in the park.

That’s why there are candidates who run for public office not for the fun of it, but for the fund of it. It’s no longer true that “kung galit ka sa isang tao, guyuhin mong pumasok sa pulitika.” For all you know right after the elections, he is romping all the way to the bank. Information has it that right after the 1998 elections, Erap distributed millions of pesos to choice governors and congressmen, claiming “sobra yan kaya dagdag gracia!” (One Quezon local official was one of them pocketing P20M as admitted by the ever clueless yet grateful wife). Calling FPJ, make up your mind.

Now GMA is in a quandary.

She has already announced her candidacy and placed on notice prospective contributors who in the tradition of a presidential form of governance would want some kind of insurance. Insurance from what? The usual harassments from the BIR, Customs, BID, DOJ, etc. Here we go again, they chorus. May kikita na naman! At the back of their minds, Mr. Joe Pidal in a jiffy would come a-knocking, this time mustering a newly found confidence and in utter kapal-muks breaks into his signature falsetto “paano ba ito mga bossing, kaunting tulong naman uli diyan.” His eyes eloquently say, “kayo rin.” He has to arm-twist (this is where he’s good at) or he puts on the block, to save his face, his otherwise dwindling legendary recuerdo. The Opposition is again waiting for this pochut to commit another blunder. (By the way, in Quezon Province, a man who is jobless, stays at home, does nothing except shoots orders to the maids and drivers, sleeps the whole day and comes home at night dead drunk with lipstick marks all over, and totally depends on his wife for a living is a pochut). You already know what a pendejo means.

This time, Mr. Pidal has already sent instructions to monitor the activities of her personal lawyer who might have gone on his lonesome shaking prospective investors for campaign gasoline purportedly for his client’s with a furtive injunction to please open an account in the Cayman or Barbados Islands. Mr. Pidal seethes against these double-timing lawyers who managed to feather-nest beyond the term of his wife. He knows that their partnership is co-terminus with the President. Naisahan ng pating ang buaya!

The contributors are not up in arms. They are shaking their heads not in self-pity. They are seized with unimaginable sadness over the fate of this country that they have come to love and called home. Now they are checking their visas from foreign countries scouting where to relocate their moribund businesses.