Why did Noli go away?

Vice President Noli de Castro has left for Kuwait. I hope he is only visiting and will not decide to stay there and become an OFW.

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But I also understand that he was sent there to do some negotiating for Pinoys who are in trouble with the law. Maybe he will accomplish more than what our diplomats have done, so far. But if one were of the suspicious type of mind, one would wonder if he had not been sent away because he was one of those who joined the cry for the lifting of the infamous Proclamation 1017. Maybe he was asked to cool it in Kuwait.

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Meanwhile, today is the day when the Supreme Court will listen to the oral arguments against the legality of the presidential proclamation. I bet all the lawyers in the country are a-tiptoe as they await the resolution of the High Court. Not only lawyers, of course, more apprehensive are the media people against whom the proclamation seems to have been intended. Because even now, when the president has so graciously and generously lifted it, media people continue to hear rumbles which sound like threats that they have not yet heard the end of it.

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Also awaited eagerly is documentary that Malacañang is reported to be releasing that will show how true were the reports, I mean, intelligence reports, from the military about the coup plot they had allegedly discovered and neutralized. How many copies of the diskette will there be? Will we again see Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye coming out with one in his left hand and another in his right? I hope not, because it will only confuse us more than when he presented his Hello Garci Tapes One and Two.

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While the Justices and the lawyers are facing each other as they dissect Proclamation 1017, let us look forward with bated breath again to the release of the report prepared by the Armed Forces of the Philippines on the claims of poll fraud in Mindanao. This is the same issue that had led to the issuance of the equally unpopular Executive Order 464, effectively muffling the mouths of witnesses summoned by Congress. Remember that thrilling testimony of the unfortunate Brigadier Gen. Francisco Gudani? He never got to the end of it because of 464.

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Now, the subject of this probe supposedly conducted by the AFP is also the same as what Gudani was being asked to confirm. Featured in that probe are some generals supposed to be the opposite of Gudani who, as the alleged Garci voice said in the famous tape, was not to be relied on, being suspected to be with the opposition. One can only guess at what the AFP report will say. A clue is that the two generals mentioned favorably in the tapes have since been promoted and are in high places already. As for the report, the timing of its release is as perfect as it was for the surfacing of Garci.

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Ever since P-1017, I have become very interested in reading the Daily Tribune, just to see how much brinkmanship its editor and columnists are still practising. And, by golly, cowardly ones like us can only get shivers running up and down our spines to see what they still continue to write, "inciting to sedition charges" notwithstanding. Yesterday's issue carried expressions like "Malacañang and its goons", calling the cases against them "lutong macao", and stressing that truth is anathema to "a lying, cheating and thieving regime". Now I'm sure the Tribune people are really going for broke. As the old folks used to say (this is more colorful in the native tongue) "Since you are already wet, you might as well take a bath".

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Poor Senate President Frank Drilon. One can almost see the legendary sword of Damocles swiping closer to the cord on which hangs his presidency of that august body. But he has not been deserted by all the members of the Liberal Party even if the presidency has been snatched from him. Many of its old guards and respected members are still behind him, and they are also calling the new order "an illegitimate presidency". So what's new?*

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