MEDIUM RARE

Gifts unwrapped. Boxes torn open (why the day after Christmas is also known as boxing day in Western countries, when presents bought in a store are allowed to be returned or exchanged for another size, style, or color). Some children looking disappointed.

There’s always time to hold on to one’s fervent wish: New Year’s Day is next week.

For Ping Lacson. I wish he could touch more people and look more approachable so they can hear his message loud and clear. But as our most sociable writer-editor reported, he was at a party wining and dining with the most highly rated of “A” listers when he found out that they were for Lacson. He screamed, “Why of all people Ping Lacson!,” a ramrod-straight police general whose bible would be Sun Tzu’s book but not Emily Post’s.

A p.r. man hinted at Ping’s military background as the source of his low ratings in surveys, but that reasoning runs counter to my idea of Ping as the big brother who will protect and defend me from bullies and crooked cops. And if he can do that for me, he can protect the rest from kidnappers, drug dealers, terrorists.

For Manny Pacquiao. I wish he’d save his money for later, when the campaign really heats up. Know-it-alls always end their analyses of a losing candidate this way: “The money ran out two, three weeks before election day. How could they not know that’s the crucial time for spending?” For Isko Moreno. I wish the population outside the NCR could visit Intramuros, the Manila Bay Area, the picnic grounds beside City Hall, Arroceros forest in the city. I wish they’d observe how graffiti on public buildings and walls have magically disappeared. New York City’s former mayor, Rudy Giuliani, attributed a drop in crime to the “broken windows” theory that rundown neighborhoods attracted criminals; for once those metaphorical windows were fixed, the bad guys stayed away. I think the graffiti artists respect Yorme too much to deface the pretty picture that’s Manila today.

For Comelec. In deciding the disqualification case against the leading candidate, I wish you could/would follow vox populi. No, poll surveys are not the elections, but can you afford to not hear them as the voice of democracy?