By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.

A FRIEND who read my column last week said I really put it succinctly and well when I titled my piece “The Waiting Game.” Indeed, he said, everyone among the more concerned sectors of society is now into some kind of, uh, waiting game. Waiting for something to happen, anticipating a dramatic break in the daily routine sometime soon.

I don’t know but maybe, what some people are into now, is all wishful thinking.

Everyone just seems to want to say something and be heard above the cacophony of voices of protest against the latest presidential action – the executive clemency granted former President Joseph Estrada. Never mind if their pieces border on the unfounded, fantastic or plain ridiculous; they just have to air their views.

The truth and fact though is – Erap’s now a free man. All attempts to question the presidential pardon given by President Arroyo to the actor-president are so much crap. They serve only to whet the appetite of gossipers and kibitzers.

So unfortunate that even former President Fidel Ramos seems to have fallen into the current mania for doomsday painting, warning the Little Lady in Malacanang her days are numbered, like it was in his power to say who goes out –and when– from the Palace he once occupied. Many people, including his own provincemates, think FVR is talking thru his hat.

It is even so galling to hear groups like the Black and White Movement, yes, the very gang of righteous rich protesters calling for their usual mass action (that had once fallen on deaf ears as when they tried to rally people against the President a few years back and found to their dismay that only they and their closest alalays were marching and holding their placards aloft).

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The truth and fact is, Erap can command a whole lot of warm bodies on the streets much more than these characters ever can.

GMA, for all her sins, imagined and real, has an infinitely much better grasp of who is the better-believed (by their followers) among her administration’s critics than anyone of the current naysayers on the Erap pardon. That is why she can afford to shrug off the latter’s collective bluster.

It may be too early to say that Erap’s being set free by the woman whose ascendancy to the presidency he has consistently questioned has altogether tempered or halted the pro-Erap opposition to GMA now. We have the feeling even GMA is quite hopeful (though not that fully assured) that some of the opposition heat could be taken off her back with the Erap pardon.

But whether or not her devout wish comes true, we do not think the presidential pardon for the former president as a separate and distinct cause is enough to spark the gathering of as big an opposition crowd as those of Edsa One or even Edsa Two. But the rally bugs can of course always try.

Much of the sting of a mass rally, courtesy of the thousands of loyal Erap supporters, may have been taken out with a stroke of the presidential pen on that clemency order.

As always, GMA took a calculated gamble And, way we look at it, she has the stronger hand in this.