Today Mar Roxas was elected President of the Liberal Party. He promised to bring the LP to victory in 2010. This signals officially the start of the 2010 presidential election. Everybody is saying it is still three years away. But hello!? It is only less than 900 days away! Mar will run under LP. Manny Villar will run under the Nacionalista Party. Loren Legarda will run under the Nationalist People's Coalition. Lakas-Kampi (or is it Lakas OR Kampi) has no candidate so far. Noli de Castro ran as independent senator in 2001 and under Lakas-CMD-NUCD in 2004, but still has not gotten the complete trust of the coalition, a trust strong enough for him to be its official standard-bearer. Will one of the opposition presidentiables move to Lakas and run under its party? As I have said, I think Erap Estrada will run as President in 2010. His intention seems to be to "united" the opposition. So the opposition better unite, as one, or else Tatay Erap will run again. By the way, I att

I am inviting all of you to the book launching of Ladlad 3: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Writing (Anvil Publishing). The launch will be held on December 1, Saturday, 5 pm at Bestseller's Bookstore, 4th floor, Robinson's Galleria, Ortigas, Pasig City. There will be a book signing, singing, dancing, food, and drinks. Please come to the launching of the book series that helped kick open the door of the LGBT movement in the Philippines. See you there -- and spread the word.

It is raining, and then the sun is shining, and everything is hilong-talilong (higgledy-piggledy?) I have a column in today's Philippine Star, the Young Star section. You may go to www.philstar.com I write for the Arts and Culture section every Monday, but since they said my readers are young (like my kumare Jessica Zafra's), I should also write for Friday. Well and good. Because 70 percent of the voters are young, it is good to have a headstart with the young and the literate. Woe to the candidate who disses the so-called youth vote. I talked to one of them, a presidential wanna-be, who said the youth does not vote but only stays in Starbucks. I said, excuse me, more like Jollibee than Starbucks. He also said the youth do not read. Of course they do, but shorter books, thinner volumes, words scrawled in cell phones, in the Internet, in the blogs. Those who ignore the youth do so at their own peril.

I said it a month ago and I am saying it again: Erap might run as President of the Philippines in 2010. Again. If not him, then his proxy, his son Jinggoy, would do it. Erap might run to unify the opposition, since they say there are so many people who want to run as president. I do not think there is something wrong in announcing your plans to run for a position in an election to be held three years from now. The campaign for the next elections begins a day AFTER the last election. And why do you have to be coy about your plans? Be coy only if you have an IQ below sea level, or have dirty hands, or lack fabulousness and poise.