Binay is now the indispensable candidate

FROM a scanty wheatfield of three announced presidential wannabes, we ended with a charlock-infested crop of 22 filing their certificates of candidacy for president on Monday. Vice President Jejomar C. Binay led the filers, but the pack failed to include the two other most frequently mentioned presidential wannabes—Liberal Party’s Mar Roxas, whom President B. S. Aquino 3rd has anointed as his candidate, and the “Independent” Grace Poe Llamanzares, whom the corporate elite and their external partners would like to impose on the electorate despite her known constitutional ineligibility. Their fengshui masters and soothsayers will decide their “luckiest day.” In any case, the Commission on Elections should receive the last COC by Friday; it could then start weeding out the “nuisance candidates.”

Perennial presidency candidates Pascual Racuyal and Lucio de Gala are no more, but they have been replaced by new “celebrities.” If Mrs. Llamanzares files a COC, more than one individual may want her classified as a nuisance candidate for being legally “stateless,” or at the very least not a natural-born Filipino. This question is already pending before the Senate Electoral Tribunal, where former senatorial candidate Rizalito David has filed a quo warranto suit against her. But David has since joined those who would like to become president and may no longer want to file a case against Mrs. Llamanzares at the Comelec. It may now be Mrs. Llamanzares’ turn to try to get David declared as a nuisance candidate.