IN the season of “Silent night, holy night,” senatorial candidate Florin “Pilo” Hilbay wants the people to “make noise” because “so much is happening” that they know nothing about or are being shut out of the discussion.
As one of only eight candidates of the Liberal Party, the former solicitor general has “Mula Tondo Hanggang Senado” as his battlecry. Born into a family of modest means, he had a father who knew enough chess to name his only child after a chess master. Years later, pulling himself up by his own boot straps with a job in the office of Sen. Jovito Salonga and then becoming President Benigno S. Aquino III’s Solgen, he shaved his head – “It’s a big savings!” – and moved to Quezon City, near Batasan (where decibels are perennially high).
Admitting that he’s rating poorly in the surveys, Mr. Hilbay, 44 and single, grabs every chance he gets to talk to media, who love an underdog, especially an articulate one. Just as articulate and in need of media help is Butch Valdes, a CPA and economic analyst who has a radio show but needs more air time to tell listeners to vote for his Magnificent Seven, who are all relatively unknown (as long as they’re not described as the Reticent Seven of their Katipunan ng Demokratikong Pilipino).
Someone who’s not making noise, even if or because she’s tops in the surveys, is Sen. Grace Poe. Grace and her mother, Susan Roces, cannot understand why the senadora is identified by pollsters as Mary Grace Natividad Poe Llamanzares – that’s five names – when she’s known by two short ones. What’s in a name? Plenty, when it comes to how voters recognize a name and a face!
Not noisy enough with the elections five short months away? A p.r. expert and image maker, for all his experience with politicians, finds it curiouser and curiouser that this late in the day the candidates and their parties are doing nothing more than waiting and wishing, silently by the sidelines. One first-timer has canceled his appointment three times. Similarly, the others seem to be in no hurry to bare their plans and flash the cash. A slow burn, indeed. Have politicians finally realized that the people are sick of politics and enjoying the promise of “O Holy Night”?
