Hillary might get even

As if his country did not have enough troubles with its foreign relations, no less than the president of Israel himself is now embroiled in another one that has led to his "leave of absence", which, apparently, is just a polite word for suspension there. And what reasons there are for his temporary ouster! President Moshe Katzav is being charged with the rape of a female employee when he was still the foreign minister.

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But it is not only for rape that he has been allowed to go "on leave". He is also accused of breach of trust and accepting bribes. There are other complaints of sexual harassment, too, and each one of the charges is enough to put him in jail for a long vacation. How lucky former U.S. president Bill Clinton must be feeling. He could have been the first head of the state to be charged with sexual harassment, at least. He's lucky, I say, because Monica didn't file charges, she was honest enough to accept that what happened between them was consensual.

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As for Bill Clinton, another piece of luck may come to him soon if his first lady and now New York Senator Hillary, gets nominated and is picked to lead the ticket of the Democrats in the next American election. It will be back to the White House for them then. Everybody knows that ever since they left Washington, the couple had been focused on Hillary's own ambition. At least she is not one who will start a dalliance at the Oval Office. But who can tell? She just might, to get even!

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Wednesday night, in Iloilo, I caught snatches of a press conference of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez on TV. Maybe his provincemates were really soft-pedalling on him, or perhaps they were wary of his cutting tongue. Anyway, the questions were not as ascerbic as one would expect, there hardly were any rejoinders when he answered a question. But maybe they were afraid he would also call them "ignorant", which seemed to be his favorite adjective while there.

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I had gone to Iloilo Wednesday with my sister for the wedding of a relative where both of us were sponsors. We sailed on a Weesam vessel and though the sea was a bit rough at times, we settled down for a speedy trip. But suddenly, about 20 minutes after we had left port, the engine grew quiet, and the boat just stopped. All the passengers were surprised and me, with my headline-oriented mind, instantly imagined that some pirates or even Abu Sayyaf dregs had hailed us. Then a crew member announced that we had developed some engine trouble, apologized, and said it would be fixed in about 30 minutes. It took a little less than that, and soon we were moving again. What if we were in an airplane?

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On Sunday, January 14, I was throwing out things from my overloaded handbag when I noticed that I had two raffle coupons from SHELL that were given to me when I filled up at my "suki" station. I knew I had been given others, but could no longer find them, and when I peered to read the dates, I saw that the third and last draw was right on that day with deadlines at 11 p.m. Oh, I gushed, "May chance pa!"

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So we sped off to the gasoline station and told the attendant that we wanted to drop our coupons. Oh ma'am, he said, it's finished na. The agents already took all the entries before 2 p.m. pa. We can't accept that anymore. But, I argued, it is only 4:30 p.m. and it says here very clearly that the deadline is 11 p.m. He just shook his head, well, sympathetically, as if saying that 2 p.m. and 11 p.m. are all the same. I moved on to another Shell station and it was worse, the boy said the coupons were collected 9 a.m. yet.

***

Frankly, I didn't even know what I would have won if my coupons had made it since the prizes were not indicated on them. I was only disgusted because they should not have printed the deadline, with the time very clearly stated, if they didn't mean it. We in the media, in the print media especially, maintain healthy respect for deadlines, so it never occurred to me that for Shell, deadlines are elastic. Oh well, another lesson learned.*

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