HIS LAW SCHOOL study buddies spew out superlatives when asked for proof that Gilberto Cojuangco Teodoro Jr., candidate for president of the administration Lakas-Kampi party, is true “Galing at Talino.”

EVERY Thursday afternoon two scores ago, a pack of students from the University of the Philippines in Diliman would jump on a bus and roar off to the cheap restaurants of Cubao or Quiapo. On Fridays, when they also finished classes early, the students would catch the second-run shows in the movie houses of Cubao, where a double feature cost only 60 centavos, or half the peso and twenty for a new movie. Sometimes they would have money left for a burger.

IN THE SUMMER of 1977, four young students graduating from the Ateneo de Manila high school applied for the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program, hoping to become Air Force cadet officers when they start their first year of college in the Ateneo University.

THE HORRIBLY costly air war for the presidency has in recent weeks ceased being the exclusive domain of moneyed politicians and political parties. The new players and big buyers of political advertisements on television are seven apparently cash-rich party-list groups accredited by the Commission on Elections as supposed representatives of the “marginalized” and presumably poor sectors of Philippine society.