IT HAPPENED so fast, or so it seemed, that it looked like ex-Speaker Bebot Alvarez didn’t know what hit him. Had it happened in the US, it would have been the subject of a lampoon in “Saturday Night Live”.
Belated reports, however, belie this immediate impression. Something was cooking somewhere not too far from Alvarez territory, political or geographical – probably more on the latter.
The end of it all is that Alvarez had pushed his luck too far. He probably felt like he was too powerful he mistook himself as either an immoveable object or an irresistible force. He forgot the definite article “the”. Lesson: Grammar can be handy in politics, too. As it turned out, he was neither.
One of two things can be attributed to Alvarez’s downfall. First off, he dubbed, witlessly, the President’s daughter as part of, if not the leader, of an emerging opposition in Mindanao. How unwise and impolitic could he get. Hadn’t he known of the equation that “the friend of my enemy is my enemy, too”? Even in politics, blood is thicker than water as well.
That’s misstep or misspeak number one.
But his more serious – and fatal – error was in floating the idea of a No-El.
Hadn’t he seen the handwriting on the wall? Sara’s new party was designed to launch her candidacy for the Senate! A No-El would have scuttled that plan. He was the elephant in the room, so to speak, and that was the last straw. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
The fact that subsequent surveys showed Sara among the leading possible aspirants probably made it even worse for Alvarez. The polls may have accelerated his untimely exit.
As it happened, the old saw “what are we in power for” – an arrogant statement coined by another politician from Mindanao – hasn’t lost its currency. Alvarez can’t complain that he was not fairly warned by the prime tenant in Malacanang. Didn’t he remind everyone and sundry of Murphy’s Law, that anything that can go wrong, will?
So much for that. The reality may not have sunk in yet for the erstwhile speaker. While reminiscing about the past and pondering about his future as politician -- he probably hasn’t seen the end yet—he could chew on the old wisdom and take consolation in it that everything in this world --- including wealth and power according to the late Governor Bren Z. Guiao, is temporary.