The term, by the way, applies to a high office holder whose power has diminished because he or she is soon to leave office as a result of defeat in an election. It’s used to label politically bankrupt politicians in the sense that they have been winged.

In Gloria’s case, she will surely become one such lame duck when her candidates are not elected. Why, she is now "sitting duck," that is, vulnerable to political attacks ever since she began her illegitimate presidency.

Indeed, the legitimacy of Gloria’s presidency, even if she is not running for office, is a major issue. The other issues are the "Hello Garci" scandal that resulted in Arroyo’s "election" in 2004; the reforming of the Commission on Elections, which has been tainted with corruption; political "turncoatism" or party switching; constitutional reforms that include the proposed shift from the presidential to a parliamentary form of government.

Of course, there are other issues against Gloria herself, such as official corruption, misuse of public funds, political killings and violations of human rights, freedom to peaceably assemble and protest, freedom of speech and the press, matters which have been hurled at her administration, and remain unanswered to this day.

Surely, these issues will be well remembered by the 45 million voters when they cast their ballots on E-Day. They have not forgotten these since that time when she conspired to remove Joseph Estrada, the legitimately elected president, in 2001, and cheated Fernando Poe, Jr. in the 2004 elections.

The great majority of the registered voters have seen that all the claims of Gloria and her lackeys in the Palace and cohorts in Congress were lies, nothing but lies, in particular her so-called "economic gains." She has bragged about her "economic performance" in the past six years, but the facts do not bear these out. They are false, fabricated by her spin makers and corrupted economic advisers.

They have claimed that the people are better off now than before she became a resident of Malacañang. The unexpurgated truth: Unemployment remained higher than before; household hunger reached a record high in the past six years of her regime; education and health care have been neglected, especially among the poor, and foreign investors have avoided the country like the plague.

Oh, about Gloria’s claim that the strength of the economy under her watch was indicated by the strong peso and the active stock market. These are blatant lies, too. As objective economic observes well know, these are not good barometers of a healthy economy.

False, too, is her claim of credit for the appreciation of the peso and the active stock market. She has absolutely nothing to do with them. The peso , as even a freshman in economics knows well, has appreciated because the American dollar has weakened, and because of the remittances of OFWs, the jobless who went abroad precisely because of the shortness of jobs and livelihood opportunities caused by Gloria’s failure to make the economy grow fast enough to provide employment to them.

In sum, Gloria’s depicted "economic gains" are nothing but mirage, lies, lies, nothing but lies!

At stake in Monday’s decisive polls are elective positions, totaling almost 18,000, from 12 seats in the Senate, 275 seats in the House of Representatives, including 55 party list seats, down to 162 governors and vice governors, 236 city mayors and vice mayors, 3,020 municipal mayors and vice mayors, and thousands of members in Sangguniang Bayan and Sagguniang Panlungsod.

Now, will the Filipino voters allow Gloria Arroyo’s candidates to win? Will they watch idly by when Gloria’s cheating machinery goes into action to rob them of their sacred ballot? Will they let her go on scot-free, unpunished?

The great majority of the people are fed up. They have had enough of the lies in the last six years of her corrupt regime. They have seen how she and her political henchmen and image-builders have tried to hoodwink them about the true state of the national economy, about how she grabbed the presidency from Erap in 2001, and stole it from FPJ in 2004. They have witnessed the unconscionable corruption in government, the political assassinations. And they want to put had end to all the lying and cheating and the thieving and the robbing of the public treasury in Gloria Arroyo’s tainted regime by not electing her candidates.