MANILA, Philippines — The Gibo and Edu show got off to a roaring start Thursday, declaring “Game na!” and saying that excellence, not criticism of opponents, will be the key to victory in the May elections.

Wearing a polo shirt with rolled up sleeves and denim jeans, Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro Jr., 45, who until Monday was defense secretary, was officially proclaimed standard-bearer of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s ruling coalition.

Also proclaimed was his running mate, popular actor and TV host Eduardo “Edu” Manzano, 54, at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City, which was packed with some 3,000 stalwarts of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD coalition.

“Game na,” Manzano yelled to rousing applause. It was the familiar cry on his long-running show “Game KNB (Are You Game)?”

“The easiest way to campaign is to criticize,” said Teodoro, a Harvard-educated lawyer and bar topnotcher, referring to the opposition candidates he is trailing in popularity surveys.

“Excellence will be the key to our winning our struggle for economic and social liberties,” he added.

Teodoro later conceded to reporters that Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III was leading the polls, obviously benefiting from the wave of sentimental support for his late parents—the assassinated Benigno Aquino Jr. and President Corazon Aquino.

The former defense chief invited fellow candidates to debate their respective platforms—clearly heeding the call of concerned Filipinos for an end to the politics of personalities in the upcoming balloting and address issues tearing at the nation’s fabric.

Teodoro said there was no sure-fire way to prop up his ratings.

“The strategy is to try to win the votes of each and every Filipino through a combination of what you have to say, what you have to offer them, and a combination of their trust in you,” he said.

“If I were discouraged, how about the person who has to rebuild his life? How about the person who lost everything after working so many years? We will catch up and we will win.”

He said that now that he was out of government, “the true Gibo will come out.”

Substance over popularity

As if to show that the party valued substance over popularity, Teodoro talked at length about his platform of government, on top of which is his advocacy of a person’s right to life, and of the family as a basic social unit, a program espoused by the influential Philippine Catholic Church hierarchy.

Teodoro said he would meet this commitment by “nurturing families in the exercise of their right to have a roof over their head, the right to have food on its table, the right to send their children to school and the right of the parents to a decent livelihood.”

To ensure the people’s exercise of their human rights, he said he would address the four faces of poverty: Poverty of the mind, poverty of the pocket, poverty of the environment and the poverty of relationships.

To provide education for all, Teodoro proposed that the poor be given a direct share in the annual national income, and that access to tertiary education be made universal.

“The state shall institute innovative financial arrangements to enable each home to have a college diploma, and in every family, a college graduate. Indigent families shall be automatically and universally covered by state health insurance and shall pay no excess fees for their health care and hospitalization,” he said.

Key out of poverty

To stamp out poverty, Teodoro said people should be trained to become entrepreneurs, and small businesses given access to capital and credit and to “upscale infrastructure” to stimulate the economy.

“For a good start, we shall modernize the infrastructure for land, sea and air transport. Both our highways on land and highways on the seas should be safe and secure for commerce and travel. Our railway system should provide a physical backbone to our main islands of Luzon, Cebu and Mindanao, and simultaneously linking more islands by bridges making possible seamless travel from the north of Luzon, through the Visayas and on to the south of Mindanao,” he said.

Teodoro said he agreed with the idea of reducing the country’s dependence on imported energy and “contribute to the global reduction in emissions by optimizing the opportunities in green energy—renewable and indigenous.”

“We reiterate our commitment to strengthening the four pillars of our society. These pillars are: Pro-God, pro-people, pro-country, and pro-environment,” he added.

Wholesale condemnation

After an attempt at humor, Manzano became combative, blasting critics ridiculing his attempt to seek the second highest office in the land.

He said not only doctors, lawyers and businessmen had the right to be voted upon.

“In questioning my qualifications for the vice presidency simply because of one of my professions, my detractors virtually made a wholesale condemnation of those in the entertainment industry as being unfit and incapable of providing competent leadership,” Manzano said.

Wearing dark gray long-sleeves and black slacks, he said his critics “do not realize that in effect, they also question the intellectual capacity of everyday Filipinos to decide who their leaders should be.”

More than just looks

“Any candidate always looks for someone who can boost his chances and I would only be so glad to help Secretary Gibo,” Manzano said, citing the case of Sen. John McCain who had tapped Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate in last year’s US elections.

But unlike Palin, he said: “I bring a little bit more to the table than just celebrity appeal.”

“They conveniently close their eyes and minds to the fact that I have had training and experience in the military. I have worked in the banking and shipping industries before entering the field of entertainment and the political arena,” Manzano said in his speech.

“But beyond that, and more than the purity of good intentions, I also offer my honest labor, my personal integrity and dedication to duty, fortified by my experience in local governance and law enforcement.”

‘In very good shape’

Asked about his chances against Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II, the running mate of Aquino, Manzano cited Teodoro’s well-applauded speech and said: “I think we’re in a very good shape.”

Teodoro took the crucial first step at improving his miserable ratings by turning his party’s televised convention into an informal, town hall-style gathering to get his political vision and campaign platform across a live audience.

Fluent in English, he took pains to speak in Filipino, talking about a wide range of topics such us culture and the arts and bringing hope to compatriots toiling abroad and victims of the recent typhoons.

Obama-like eloquence

But Teodoro’s eloquence clearly suffered a bit when he switched from his predominantly English, platform-heavy and Barack Obama-like delivery during the first half of his acceptance speech.

A case in point: “Our destiny is not only to get by. Our destiny is to lead and to conquer and conquer we shall because we must.”

The initial part of the speech also sounded too formal that Teodoro appeared to have taken a leaf from the late Pope John Paul II’s “Laborem Exercens” encyclical on the value and dignity of human toil.

“Every Filipino has a right to be fully employed, because it is in work that a person finds his fulfillment as a human being and gains the means to secure his dignity,” Teodoro said.