9.4 million Pinoys voted for Erap?!?

Erap pa rin...

So the canvassing of votes in Congress is done and Senator Noynoy Aquino is expected to be officially proclaimed President. No surprise there, really. We've pretty much known Noynoy has it in the bag as early as 2 days after the election... the result of the Vice Presidential race between Binay and Roxas was what everyone was interested in because it was so close.

What really surprised me was how well Erap Estrada did in this election. Garnering over 9.4 million votes was nothing to sneeze at... seriously, he beat Manny Villar's vaunted billions?! He won the 1998 election with 11 million votes so it appears he didn't lose much support even after being convicted and imprisoned for plunder.

This of course befuddle many people... one of whom is my ex sis-in-law in Australia who I talked to yesterday, she wanted to know how Erap got so many votes and what the heck were those people thinking/smoking?

I share her confusion but I've talked to some of these Erap voters (the SkyCable guy who installed my Digibox before the election, the security guards in my building etc.) and they say the same thing "All politicians steal, Erap was just unlucky to get caught and anyway at least di sya nagnakaw sa gobyerno--sa jueteng lang".

I am not kidding, those were really their sentiments. It's really sad that people just readily accept the "fact" that majority of our politicians are crooks. That since almost everyone in government is out for themselves, it's okay to vote for a populist ex-president who was once imprisoned for corruption.

Their reasons for voting might be wrong-headed but we can't deny that most elected officials are corrupt little ba$t@#ds... let's hope our new President would remember his campaign promise to go after these conscienceless creeps. It could help win back our people's trust in government and hopefully, would keep them from voting for a convicted felon for president next time around.

Update: Erap is retiring from politics and showbiz.