Is She The One? — page 2

Filipinos loved The Passion of the Christ. It played during Holy Week, when Filipinos had themselves scourged and crucified, an annual tradition in Asia's only predominantly Christian country. If Mel Gibson were to visit a video store in Los Angeles' Little Manila district, he would discover a great simpatico with Philippine action films. Christ's torment is as central to Philippine Catholicism as it is to Gibson's traditionalist faith, and Philippine action melodramas are undisguised passion plays—a man of recognized purity and humility is brought low by an evil society threatened by virtue. He suffers mightily, but ultimately triumphs against perfidy, giving hope for salvation to his oppressed village or police force. Admittedly, this is always accomplished by gunfire and vengeful bloodletting, which isn't quite Christian, but movies have their own orthodoxies.

Poe (or FPJ, as he is known to fans) is the genre's king of kings, and he has portrayed them all: the slum leader cracking gamblers' heads, an environmentalist mayor, numberless corruption-busting cops getting the hairy eyeball from dirty colleagues. As a candidate for President, Poe is indistinguishable from the cinematic redeemer, offering nothing more—and nothing less—than virtue in a world sunk in corruption and despair. Humility is a vital element, and Poe's boosters make the most of that, saying his lack of tony qualifications or experience in the dirty game of politics will ensure a virtuous presidency. According to Eduardo Angara, former President of the Philippine Senate and one of Poe's chief aides: "The issue of this campaign is not experience and education. It's trust. What's the use of experience and education if our economy has been brought down to the ground?" Former First Lady Imelda Marcos is a Poe supporter, too. She brought the candidate to visit the preserved corpse of husband Ferdinand in the northern city of Batac last month. "In the end," she insists, "you need a leader not only with a diploma or a title but a soul."

A day with the Poe campaign in two northern provinces is full of dusty roads, determined crowds and Yummy burgers from Jollibee (a Philippine fast-food chain), but not a lot of substance. At the culminating rally in the city of Laoag, there's an endless series of speeches by candidates, and to quicken the pace, the campaign has laid on some déclassé entertainment aimed at those D- and E-class voters. An up-and-coming matinee idol sings ballads and hurls his own 8-x-10 glossies into the crowd. Next up is Mystica, a raunchy singer in thigh-high red leather boots, who's famed for performing full splits in mid-song. The final performer is Fred Panopia, the Singing Cowboy of the Philippines, who yodels. As midnight nears—the crowd has been standing since dusk—Poe himself finally appears, not so much a politician as a grandee receiving a lifetime achievement award. He gives a speech that lasts barely five minutes—shorter than a set by Mystica, and considerably less revealing.

To get anything close to a straight answer from Poe, journalists are reduced to ambush interviews, which TIME managed in a schoolroom in the city of Candon. He sits down warily and responds to questions with a kindly nod, but his answers are single sentences, sometimes just fragments. How's the campaign going? "So far so good." Will he win? "Hopefully." What's the first thing he will do if elected? "Address corruption." The second? "Total transparency." The essence of an ambush interview, of course, is that the ambushee can walk away whenever he feels the need, which Poe does after a few minutes. He can't be kept any longer from his more pressing responsibilities as a candidate: shaking hands, bestowing smiles, waving from the back of that pickup truck.

Technically, Poe's Coalition of United Filipinos party has a platform, but the planks are all motherhood and mango pie: schools should be improved, farmers aided. According to Juan Ponce Enrile, who is running for re-election as Senator with Poe's support, Poe doesn't need one. "The people who will vote for him don't care about a platform," explains Enrile, the former Defense Minister who sparked the 1986 People Power rebellion by splitting with Marcos. "The only people that care about a platform are the enemies that will use it against him. It is an undefinable thing that makes up what we now call FPJ. He brings hope."

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