Roco nag-back out?

[gretzy]

haaay, our politics is a big joke!

[TEAL]

Sana, mag vice president si Sen Roco para may qualified naman na candidate sa position na ito.

[IceColdBeer]

shadow,
ganun ba? hehehe langyang sakit yang back pain na yan ah, di kayang idiagnose ng mga doktor

[Vegeta]

baka naman may threat sa kanya unless mag-backout sya or some shiet.

kelangan natin ng another president like Marcos. imagine nyo nagawa nya sa economy natin until nasira sya gawa ni Imelda.

[karlbo]

hmmm... kung siguro nga 150million yun eh magakakasakit rin ako...

pero bakit kung kelan malapit na ang election saka pa siya magpa gamot?... hmmm... backout na ba talaga?....

yari na ang boto niya, im sure mahahati yung kila ping, fpj and gma... hay?!....

Anu na po bang balita kay eddie gil?....hehehe nagaaksaya lang sila ng pera nila hay?!!>.....

[ownertype]

sabi ng officemate ko who knows a relative of roco na me colon cancer daw si raul. that explains the back pain he's experiencing right now.

[Monseratto]

Most probably nag relapse yung sakit nga. Yung lost of weight, appetite at yung sakit sa likod ay signs of the big C. Matagal na ata to, pero tiniis lang niya, which only made it worst. If it has started to spread, he might not last that long. Maybe he should admit that he is this sick so his partymates may look for another padrino. Pity!

[Monseratto]

Realignment reports fly as Roco goes to U.S.

By RECTO MERCENE
TODAY Reporter

Presidential candidate Raul Roco of the Alyansa ng Pagasa on Tuesday night reminded voters to choose their leaders well, in what appeared to be a swan song to his candidacy shortly before his flight to the U.S. for medical treatment.


“We ask for the support of the Filipino people, we ask for your prayers, please choose your leaders well, the country is on its knees, we are suffering,” he said, sounding as if he were no longer in the race.

Roco, 62, is leaving the country barely four weeks before the presidential elections to seek treatment abroad for chronic back pains aggravated by the hectic campaign. There was concern that the stress of the campaign may have worsened his prostate problem, for which he had earlier acknowledged being treated eight years ago.

Roco refused to specifically reveal the prognosis of his doctors, whom he also refused to identify, but said he was asked to seek a second opinion abroad.


“I will find out when I get there,” he said when asked at the airport what is ailing him.


Roco had lost weight and had complained of pain in the lumbar region two weeks ago.


The glow on his face is gone, the once chubby cheeks have sagged and he is pale, although he remains mentally active as he parries questions about his health and his bid for the presidency.

Roco expects the results of the examination by American doctors to be “very good,” but he refused to answer whether he would withdraw his presidential bid if the opinion was otherwise.


Accompanied by his wife Sonia, Roco hugged his daughter Zerena, who was on the verge of crying, before entering the Continental Air Micronesia lounge that would bring him to Houston, Texas, via Saipan.

[kiper]

basta ako FPJ pa rin..!!

[El Duderino]

http://www.philstar.com/philstar/News200404162603.htm

Roco: The noble warrior

HERE'S THE SCORE By Teodoro C. Benigno
The Philippine Star 04/16/2004


No, the man is not dead, far from it, and yet there is a great sense of loss as I write this piece. In a sad and sudden gesture, Raul Roco poignantly lowered his political flags. And a great hush fell. To all intents and purposes, he has left the treacherous, bullet-strewn battlefield leading to the May 10 elections. He may return before May 10, but nobody really knows. No, he didn’t chicken. No, he has not abandoned his constituents. No, he didn’t sell out to the enemy.

But Raul knew, although he would never admit it publicly, the war was lost. And with this realization, and the ruthless rigors of the campaign, his health began to buckle like a war horse with broken hooves. The man could now be critically ill with a debilitating disease. He had to leave on the instant for medical care abroad, shattering as this may have been to his warrior’s heart.

Raul relished fighting the good fight more than anybody else.

He fought this one with a grim and resolute purpose, to prove that political honesty and integrity and, yes, superior brains would triumph in the end. He would have nothing to do with guns, goons and gold, nothing to do with political chicanery. No, he would never beg for contributions, stoop to the greedy slurp of corrupt media, lick the asses of the Big Moneybags. He would fight clean. Even with a meagre war chest of just about P1 billion (so he told me), he would plant his flag on the highest hill.

Echoing Mallarmé, he declared the fight belonged to the pure of mind, the swift of feet, the noble of purpose.

For a time, this formula worked. Ibon first and then the other major survey outfits like Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations had him on top. He was depicted as "the man to beat" and everywhere he traveled in the Philippines, it was almost taken for granted he would triumph. What Raul Roco did not realize, what we all did not realize, was that the vagaries of the citizenry had begun to swing from ground to tree level. Up there, the people began to perform the hysterical gymnastics of the chimpanzee. Their worship of false idols – particularly movie and media celebrities – became a national mania.

Roco’s great failing was that he believed in the innate virtue of the Filipino.

Often, he extolled the Filipino in his speeches, even when the Filipino started to desert him. This he could not believe. The once reputable surveys, in his now awakening mind, were now being fixed, manipulated. They were there at the witching hour when the moon misted and great amounts of money changed hands. But Raul perservered. The citizenry would trump the surveys. His shock troops, the youth and the studentry, the "women of Roco" would set the tone of the triumphal march to May 10. They would never desert him.

I had never encountered any presidential candidate like him.

He stuck to his guns. He waved off my arguments that times had changed. He would need money, piles of money, to get his message to media, get it to front page and prime time, get on top of swifting events, bellow his voice loud and clear, for his was the only voice of political sobriety and sanity. Media, I said time and again, was half or more than half of the political ball game, the only catapult to winning the hearts and minds of the people. He had to be visible at all times, a lodestar in the sky.

No, he said, no. He would "peak" too early, then lose momentum. He would only break loose, break away from the pack starting December 2003, two fighting fists holding the political sky up, and nobody could stop him.

He was dead wrong. But Raul Roco never deserted his formula. Even as I demurred, he could not believe the Filipino had become a moral and disgusting contortionist, that GMA would wretchedly go back on her word of honor not to run in 2004 and many would support her. He couldn’t believe that FPJ would mindlessly run his fingers through the hair of the Filipino, and the latter would swoon in ecstasy, believing almost every word he said.

He never wavered in his conviction that he would win. That somehow the Fates had ordained it, that his unswerving faith in the Filipino was the armor that would stop all enemy bullets.

His critics in media, and they were many, drilled his banners with bullet holes. They never gave Raul Roco his due. When they should have flung plaudits and praises because he was the best qualified, they flogged the man with snide – flimsy if not phoney – accusations. He constantly beat up his wife Sonia to a pulp, didn’t he? He had a terrible temper, tossing tantrums like a red-hot skillet spewing saliva sprays – no? And he was arrogant. In foreign visits, they said Raul would vent his temper on Philippine embassy or consulate personnel who didn’t snap to attention whenever he was around. Always, he got a bum steer from media, which believe the bulk of this preposterous pap.

At the Education Department offices, where he once served as education secretary, Raul Roco allegedly bawled damnation at lowly employees, treating many of them like scum. What they forgot to mention was that the Department was crawling with syndicates, crooks, grafters, camarillas of ten percenters and profiteers, who piled up fortunes on overpriced textbooks and school equipment and fleeced millions of students. And even teachers. And Roco cracked down on them. * * *
The truth about Roco never sold in media.

The media just loved to shaft him. And for no other reason, I suppose, than sheer sadistic pleasure. A misbehaving Roco attracted bigger audiences, more readers. It was a bato bato sa langit syndrome that had Roco often for a target. Yes, these were the stray dogs that Luciano Pavarotti accused of sniffing out statues of great men in a city square, then peeing on them with obscene abandon. For in his time, the great Pavarotti was also repeatedly insulted and humiliated by sensation-hungry newshounds who described the great tenor as "unsufferably arrogant", and "puffed up" like a pregnant elephant hooting with love song in the twilight.

Roco had his moments, of course, as do all of us. And we did have our differences and surly encounters. Yes, there were times when he was implacably stubborn. But he was clean. Every bone in his body was clean.

And in retrospect, so what? He was the "last noble warrior" in a long line that started with the patricians of yore. It’s strange, my use of the word patrician. For as I look around me today, there is no politician who is patrician, Roco excepted. There is a loud whooping and a louder hollering, a bestial snort here, a simian sneeze there, salvos of bluster and braggadocio, a vast emptying of air whoozing into the ozone – the collective fart of a horde of gorillas after a hearty meal.

These are our politicians today at work and at leisure. And, honestly none merits attention, unless a journalist is handsomely compensated to write bullshit about this senator or that congressman, this or that presidential candidate.

In the yesteryears, a Manuel Quezon would have the floor, his handsome face intoning just the preamble of the constitution with his quicksilver delivery, and you could hear a needle drop. Sergio Osmena I, patriarch of all the living Osmenas today, would simply grace the Senate lectern with a profile cut from the prow of a Greek battleship. And everybody knew every word he would say was gospel. His integrity was unassaialble. And they put him on a pedestal.

Claro Recto, his thick wavy hair tossing in a tempest of eloquence as he quoted the Roman classics to fine-tune a piece of legislation, held everybody in his thrall. Jose P. Laurel, his throat belching nationalism at every turn as the Philippines sought immediate independence from America, had the political piano roaring with his oratorio. Arsenior H. Lacson was a bull-jawed, cauliflower-eared toughie with a brain. His was a classic prose that stung, that roared, that exploded.

Need I say more?

I say Raul Roco was last in this long line of political grandees. And more than anybody else, he had the right to be next president of the Philippines. He was eminently qualified. Not President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, not Fernando Poe Jr., not Ping Lacson, not anybody else. None could hold a candle to him. He was that rare individual, the Renaissance Man. He could tap the treasurers of literature with the greatest of ease as he could burrow through endless yellow volumes of Roman law in his library, as he could quote Cicero and Seneca, and draw passages verbatim from Waiting for Godot. Small wonder. Nobody would debate with him.

Rare were the occasions when we could set aside the strident potpourri of politics, for Raul was always preoccupied with the campaign. But when we did, his favorite expression was that he could easily distinguish real gold from fool’s gold. People he knew? He tossed relevant quotations into the air with the greatest of ease, and his knowledge of law was phenomenal. He could talk knowledgeably on economics.

There he goes, this political patrician. For now, Raul Roco may be the last of his kind. Lowered and bullet-ridden as his banners may be, I shall not forget his parting words when we last met: "We may be down now. But one day, Teddy, the Philippines will rise again. And we shall all be proud that we are Filipinos."

Yes, he was the last noble warrior.