Leni’s slam-dunk, LMB and Plaza Miranda
MIKE Varela, my Bedan campus contemporary and friend , is gone, at 76. Prayers, please, for one who got along well with everybody.
Tactful
DFA Secretary Jun Yasay does his darndest best to protect tactless Prez Digong from himself. Sabah/ Malaysia and Scarborough/China are tough issues, let alone our relations with other countries. Digong should bone up on them and not squander scarce valuable presidential time thrashing Sen. suited to Sal Panelo, a Defendand-Attack- Dog who blocked the probe into Digong’s bank account, described by Sen. Sonny Trillanes to be in humongous amounts. How much time has Digs wasted on that, OK, feisty woman? She looks at human rights issues, but Digong keeps changing the subject.
Aside from Panelo, he has Messrs. Medialdea, Andanar, Abella and Evasco to do the pedestrian job of palengkeros. He should not minimize the presidency. Justice Vit and I were among those who helped defend Hubert Webb, who had to spend more than 15 years in jail, having been tried and convicted by publicity. Digong has a prosecutor’s background and bias.
The Senate should institution- ally resist the invasion by the House, which reportedly will - tary discourtesy, if true. It seems to me Speaker Bebot Alvarez should talk quietly with fellow Mindanaoanon Senate Prez Koko Pimentel and tell him about his mission for Master Digong and look for a solution that would not needlessly strain the relationship of the two chambers. The House, dominated by tutas, should prudently communicate with the Senate about any of the latter’s members. Absent any action, within a reasonable time, we can understand why we need a Circular Firing Squad thrashing itself (and therefore the lawmaking branch, which Mark Twain calls in the US as the only distinct American criminal class). Sen. her to prevent heavy institutional damage. The Senate should protect itself and the relevant institutional arrangement.
Digong wants a new organization vice the UN. What if only North Korea, Syria and Somalia apply? He still has to acquire the gravitas of a statesman-diplomat. “Above all, no zeal,” advises Talleyrand. Digong may well be a diamond in the rough but he has to stop telling people publicly what he thinks of them and their ancestors, or their sexual orientation. This is 2016. Human dignity matters. It has always mattered. But, he seems to treat serious matters as jokes. (I recall that when I’d give Prez Cory serious advice, she’d laugh and laugh , but when I’d tell her a joke, she’d implement it.)
Gravitas I do not see in BongBong Marcos, either. People talk a slim margin. That is not how I see it. BB has billions and a wellknown name ( if controversial), vital in name recall, I am told. Raissa Robles had a 2012 story on how BB “had a direct hand in trying to withdraw US $213M from a Swiss bank in 1986.” Ill-gotten wealth. BB has the Solid North. He dissembled about his nonexistent degrees from elite British and American universities.
- ing but a good non-controversial name. She would take the bus to and from Naga, alone ( she has security now). Unassuming, I sensed, when she was my grad law school stude in San Beda in 2013. I read somewhere that she candidly admitted having taken the bar exam twice ( like Claro Recto, Hillary Clinton and Gerry Spence). The virtue of candor. No talk of bogus Oxford and Princeton degrees.
No Solid Bicol, either. She had to compete with Chiz Escudero, Gringo Honasan and Sonny Trillanes. (And Alan Peter Cayetano, given the reported Bicol not to ask me here about those he did not, ha?)
BB should have won walking away, with all his advantages. I see his loss as comparative to the San Beda seniors losing to St. Scholastica’s high school team. To lose to a newbie should give the Marcoses pause. Some may see the veep result as close, for BB. I see it dunk. A la Gabe Norwood’s, over had help from his teammates; San Beda HS’59). The kind of help that matters.
Staff who misled led Prez Digong to name and shame a judge gone to a better world years ago helps validate that military-police intelligence could be a contradiction in terms. PNP boss- chief “Bato” de la Rosa even challenges men to duels, a violation of Art. enforcer, lawbreaker.
We continue to name and shame Judas, Hitler and Macoy. A Nazi prison guard, 95, was convicted last June. No Japanese premier can visit a war shrine without provoki