By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.

IT WOULD have been convenient to sit on an easy chair after the voting and and simply let all the intrigues, recriminations and doubts of the recent elections last May 14 pass like so much temporary aberrations — but something tells us something’s very wrong. And it’s got something, nay, everything to do with this guy Benjamin Abalos, the man who has a knack for keeping a straight face and a little, fleeting smile while spewing terminological inexactitudes to answer just about any criticism coming his Commission’s way.

If he doesn’t know it yet, Abalos is skating on thin, very thin, ice now.

He’s taxing the people’s patience with his antics, bringing it ever closer to breaking point, the way he’s handling the reported Mindanao cheating.

No government functionary to date has stretched his office’s credibility, almost deliberately, to the limit than Abalos has. Imagine, the very official who should feel properly and promptly enraged at the wanton desecration of the right of suffrage in an integral part of the archipelago, temporizing and dilly-dallying about calling for a no holds barred investigation. Why, he’s even sending out signals, not too subtly, that those accusing his wards over at Mindanao had better present proofs.. or else.

Just good he had backtracked on his earlier statement of braggadocio about including in the national canvassing the questionable COCs from Maguindanao after he must have realized, thanks to media vigilance and Namfrel’s keen stand against cheating, that there may indeed be witnesses to the fraud. It now appears election watchdogs and the media are calling the Comelec boss’ bluff and bluster and are preparing the goods against the cheaters, his men included.

It would do Abalos and his entire caboodle of commissioners a whole lot of good to take the initiative now and moto propio investigate the growing howls of complaints from that part of the country. That might yet save whatever credibility is left of his domain.

You don’t wait for the fireman to arrive to try and put out a fire starting inside your house; you get hold of the nearest fire extinguisher or pail of water yourself to try and put it out.

And you don’t wait for days (say, after the special elections in Lanao del Sur?) to do it; you do it pronto.