This is my fourth post on the encounter Mar Roxas, the senator and presumptive presidential standard bearer of the Liberal Party had with Filipino bloggers, this writer among them.

But no, I am not yet ready to endorse him as the Pinoy Barack Obama.

But this much I am sure of: With the next presidential elections still some 19 months away, Mar has, for all intents and purposes thrown his hat into the ring just as Senate President Manny Villar and Vice President Noli De Castro have, not to mention the presumptuous and thoroughly arrogant Bayani Fernando (will do a separate piece on this gentleman some time soon).

All that Mar has not done yet is file his certificate of candidacy.

Bur by the way he talks and walks, he is running for president. Make no mistake about it.

His pedigree, his record as a politician (no longer ‘reluctant’ after taking on the Araneta/Roxas mantle due to the sudden death years back of his brother Dinggoy), his academic and intellectual maturity, and his age, all brand Mr. Palengke as presidential.

Bur Mar and his nascent political/media team have their work cut out for them.

The latest Pulse Asia Survey, if this writer is not mistaken, showed Mar, and Mr. Villar both with ‘challenging’ ratings.

Mar and his team know this and so they are going boldly into the new media, blogging and the class-and-border erasing Internet to get their message out and lock in the votes of overseas Filipinos and the youth.

This is why all at the same time Mar and his team have launched his blog and an innovative virtual protest rally site.

This ‘virtual flesh-pressing is timely but also fraught with danger, given that political operators will not more sharply have mar in their cross-hairs.

Mar appears to be declaring that this time around he is ready for the political arrows that will come his way.

A sudden change of mind will likely write finis to his political ambitions, and vision to make a difference, to “offer change that Filipinos can believe in.”

Tangentially it is also public knowledge that Mar is romantically involved with mega-popular broadcast journalist(and stunningly beauteous Korina Sanchez, a colleague of this writer in her early days and whom I deeply admire.

Will Mar tie the knot soon and be ready to have Korina as ‘indicative First Lady’ to a ‘President Mar’?

There is also the matter that Mar, to his credit, laid bare when he ran for senator: the son he sired to a former beauty queen.

This writer is mentioning these items knowing that Mar will, and should, be ready to face them squarely later if not sooner.

I am confident he is ready.

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