The need to cheat

Both the notorious cliques composed of the presidential kaklase and kabarilan had exactly the same fear. For the others, whether sycophant, suck-up or just plain vanilla kaibigan, it was nearly certain that there was a desperate need to resort to wholesale and massive cheating.

Some believe it as the only option left. The constantly increasing odds, despite the self-serving whistling in the dark and self-assuring spins of partymates, demanded it. So does the eventuality of paying back those media and mining magnates and moguls. More so do the inevitable and dire consequences of spending good money for lawyers, and perhaps, the even-greater millions just to keep the complicit out of jail for the coming plunder and fund-malversation charges certain to come.

The all-important impetus to conjure up some demonic wizardry to perpetuate the Aquino platform was not to finally deliver to the public the promised inclusive economic welfare that had been denied them these last six years, but to simply remain out of court and freely frolic out of the prison cells that await the coterie that had plundered through the pork-barrel system and its various disingenuous resurrections belatedly created yet permeating throughout the Benigno Aquino III administration.

The reality that the self-delusional find painful to accept is that the voting public had wizened up and has consciously and deliberately rejected the administration bet, deciding righteously to keep him far from the front-running pack. Recently, his numbers had again fallen far below the margins of error he constantly relied upon to claim that he was statistically tied with those that the public preferred as president.

But do the math. As did his desperate disciples. No amount of hyperbolic spins around the margins of error can arithmetically bring a loser within striking distance, given that in the last survey, he had, once too often, slipped below the error parameters. Arithmetically, if those margins were applied in both directions, the administration bet might even, in actuality, be farther away from the frontrunners.

Each fall is significant. Each reversal is a reversal in vectors and each breaks the constantly refrained trend his supporters claim as a single direction trajectory toward eventual victory. If the results of cheating in the polls are to be credible, two things are necessary. A loser must be within the margin of error. And previous reversals must be within those same margins of error. Barely two months before May, a loser is unlikely to miraculously accelerate from fourth and fifth slots to the first, where voters remain consistently discerning of what it is they seek in a president.

Such quantifiable loss and such a questionable loser create both panic and desperation among those hoping he might at least tie with the competent front-running Vice President Jejomar Binay or the charmed Sen. Grace Poe-Llamanzares enough to justify a counting-machine miracle.

It is time that Plan B be put into play. By this, we do not mean another blockbuster starring role in a contrived melodrama the administration bet has turned into a miniseries.

Ours is a mystical kingdom of fairies, warlocks and witches. Miracles happen within the bureaucracy. Funds disappear when magicians say the magical word “savings.” They reappear from puffs of smoke when witches transform these into pork-barrel funds and cash transfers.

This May, many expect more miracles in near-biblical proportions.

As cheating becomes increasingly the only option left for the desperate loser, consider taking the math further and try computing for the next unknown variable. For losers decidedly unpopular to eventually win the presidency through the application of large sums of money siphoned from big business benefactors, donors and sponsors, the cost of the payback and repayments will be much larger.

If a loser wins and the cheated electorate allows that to happen, then “Bahala kayo sa buhay niyo!”