Susan Roces in Fighting Form                                                                                          

SUSAN ROCES admits that, before this election, she never wanted to be bothered by politics. She did not speak out on issues. She did not back causes. She did not even join any of the three Edsas.

Like her husband FPJ, Susan was content to live in the world of the movies, the world that made her rich and famous and gave her a husband, who, like her, once solely owned the crown to the kingdom of the stars.

But today, with her husband's fate in the balance in the race for President of the Republic no less, she is calling out for "fairness" and "justice" in the electoral count, speaking about "the people's need to be told the truth," and working in the KNP research group that's been tasked to produce proof of discrepancies in municipal CoCs and provincial SoVs.

(It has produced proof, by the way. What remains to be seen is if the Joint Committee doing the canvassing will allow the opening of the 25-yes, just 25-election returns which the opposition wants studied. Or if Kiko Pangilinan will simply keep breaking that gavel until GMA [Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo] is proclaimed.)

Why only now?

In any case, someone who is not a movie fan might say, and rightly, that Susan Roces is saying too little too late. So many others had cried foul in so many elections before this, and over the very same issues, too, which the star now decries have been given scant space by the press.

Another might say, again rightly, that the reason many bad things about local elections persist to this day is, precisely, because people like her were content to live decade after decade only within and around their happy worlds, unmindful of the unrest outside. And that, not until the injustice lay at their doorsteps were they moved to lend their celebrity and time to the protest.

Up until the time the bad news fell on one of their own, goes the criticism, most stars, producers, directors and talent managers never took the same bad news as an affront to people, country-or democracy.

I do know, personally, that people like Armida Siguion-Reyna and Richard Gomez were taking to the streets long before this election, to question censorship and taxes, among others.

But even Armida confided only years back to daughter-in-law Bibeth Orteza that she wished, with all her being, that she'd seen the poverty much earlier, when she was younger and stronger, that she may have done more. And Richard, a star and a product endorser, has not always been able to say as much as he wants, as strongly, or as often.

I also know, again personally, that someone like Mother Lily Monteverde, although hardly seen by the public and barely given credit even by the movie industry, is right there in the thick of things, organizing uncountable press conferences to get FPJ's and Loren's side out in the media, even as people warn her that, if GMA is proclaimed anyway, she risks her businesses being given the squeeze. 

This election has made me see how, whatever else we might think about Mother Lily, she is a good one to have on your side of a fight. Win or lose, FPJ and Loren should be eternally grateful.

But, indeed, for the greater part show-biz citizens have not been too involved. And now they are feeling first-hand how public detachment, or apathy, or neglect can frustrate the most just of causes.