I was looking at the front page photo of Mar Roxas and Noynoy Aquino the other day with their hands raised with the Laban sign above the caption, “Liberal Party standard bearers” – and I was somewhat lost in thought, and off-course.

That the story made the headlines was understandable: Mar Roxas who had started his campaign for the presidency but suddenly gave way to Noynoy has assented to the young Aquino’s offer to be his vice presidential running mate.

I thought there was something odd about the picture and more so about the caption announcing the Noynoy-Mar tandem.

When he gave up running for the presidency after a vigorous and optimistic start, I assumed Senator Manuel A. Roxas II had deep-rooted reason more than just giving way to Noynoy. After all the presidency of a country is more than just friendship or personal sentiments.

And now, everything considered, isn’t Mar Roxas-Noynoy Aquino more agreeable and appealing?

But never mind.

Just the other day, too, I heard the controversial television game host Willie Revillame was being offered the vice presidential slot of the Nacionalista Party in tandem with Senator Manuel Villar, the party’s declared presidential standard-bearer.

Reports said Revillame refused to confirm or deny the offer, but viewers of his program remember him saying on television that he was announcing soon something of national importance about himself, and many were speculating he might be referring to a political career.

Now he refuses to deny or confirm Senator Villar’s supposed offer. But he did say that if he enters politics he would be “malinis akong pulitiko…”

Hello, Mr. vice president!

Some people are really that ambitious, and not very seldom, they get what they want. Look at the people we elect in office and those appointed to high positions in government. Most of them may be highly qualified, but look at the rest…

For sometime also, the name of Batangas Governor and film actress Vilma Santos had been mentioned as possible vice presidential teammate of Gilbert Teodoro, the chosen presidential nominee of the administration Lakas-Kampi-CMD party. The Gibo-Ate Vi tandem had been described by Malacañang advisers as a “powerhouse combination.”

Curiously, the Gibo-Ate Vi team was bruited about after the ruling party’s selection of Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno as the preferred teammate of Teodoro.

The suspicion is that it is being used to create the impression that the recent Lakas-Kampi-CMD national executive committee’s selection of the Teodoro-Puno tandem was not official and final: That it is meant to find a way around the Commission on Elections’ warning against party nominations of official candidates in the 2010 elections before October 21, 2009.

Chairman Jose A.R. Melo has said Comelec en banc Resolution 8646 specifies October 21 to November 19, 2009 as the period for political parties to hold their conventions to nominate official candidates for president, vice president, senators, members of the House of Representatives, governors, and other local officials.

Everything considered, including such Comelec guidelines and instructions, what we are seeing are explorations of new perspectives and approaches sought by political parties to advance their own causes.

(zhern_218@yahoo.com)