In mid February 2010, presidential candidate Noynoy Aquino, who has been consistently leading the race at least according to the surveys, challenged his closest rival Manny Villar to a one-on-one debate on any issue of Villar’s choice. The challenge was accepted by Villar although conditionally. Villar said he would back off from the proposed debate if it is intended only to be used as a venue for “mudslinging contests.”

There have been other public appearances and debates in different formats in which Aquino and Villar as well as the other presidential candidates have participated. During such an important part of the electoral exercise, the candidates were subjected to tough questioning and scrutiny by each other, the program host, a panel of moderators or the public but none of them has conceivably exhibited any such irrationality that otherwise indicates any form of mental impairment as to put his or her presidential bid in peril by virtue of it.

Of late, while the Villar presidential campaign has been seen as losing some steam, a dubious “psychological” report involving Noynoy Aquino as the patient has surfaced out of the blue. The suspicion is strong that the Villar camp is the original source of the report which has every indices of being a hoax. For one, the spurious character of the report is discernible on its face. A “psychiatric” evaluation prepared by a clergy coming from an academic department (the Psychology Department) of a university instead of a professional medical clinic or a hospital?

Fr. Tito Caluag who is supposed to have signed the report has publicly denounced the hoax by stating to the effect that the document is forged and that he is not even competent to make the evaluation since he is neither a psychologist (nor a psychiatrist).

It was then a perfect opportunity for Villar to be a gentleman politician by condemning the ludicrous fabrication and thereby allowing to mitigate the tone of animosity in the campaign (that is, if the source of the report is not his party or a cabal of rabid partisans). Very unfortunately, Villar did just the exact opposite.

One may recall that during the last US presidential election, a woman from the audience in a town hall meeting stood up and took the microphone to confirm from John McCain if Barack Obama is an Arab (implying maliciously that being an Arab, Obama is either uncivil or a terrorist). McCain defended his rival without any hesitation. “No ma’am,” McCain said to the woman after retaking the microphone from her. “He is a decent family man . . . citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about,” he further stressed earnestly.

Unlike McCain who had had the basic decency to cut off the woman wanting to stoke bigotry, Villar reacted in the other extreme by issuing a statement challenging Aquino to submit to a psychiatric test to determine his rival’s fitness to be a president. In a pretense to appear fair, Villar said he is willing to take the same test or a “comprehensive physical and mental examination in order to ascertain [our] fitness to occupy the highest office of the land.”

In the same town hall meeting where another instigator had claimed to fear the prospect of an Obama presidency, McCain responded emphatically in this fashion: “I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

Manny Villar has chosen to be cut-throat but, doesn’t this kind of political stunt remind us too of boxer Floyd Mayweather’s own silly antics? Mayweather, apparently avoiding an early encounter with Manny Pacquiao, has demanded a pre-fight Olympic-style blood testing. There is no testing policy of sorts required by any boxing commission in the US but Floyd’s excuse in insisting on it is that, like Villar, he’s willing to take the test himself.

Boxing fans all over the world consider Floyd’s demand baloney, many of them convinced that Floyd is either ducking a confrontation with Manny Paquiao or otherwise out to mudsling the Filipino boxer’s reputation.

Is it too hard for millions of Filipinos who since the Pacman phenomenon have turned boxing aficionados in droves to imagine that Manny Villar is simply doing a Floyd screwy spoof?

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