The Art of the Areglo Gone Awry

NITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL!

This, the faithful chant to themselves as mantra and muzzle, for fear of being found disloyal and therefore, undeserving of the group's protection. The greatest psychological need of the Filipino is the NEED TO BELONG. Those who understand that have mastered the Art of the Areglo. But for the faithless and the unfaithful, another motto comes to mind: UNTIL YOU DIE, DENY AND DENY! As in the private sphere, so in the public -- that the deepest secrets must be buried in the most grandiose and theatrical and misdirectional feints and red herrings. Such as grand historical projects like the Centennial Expo in Pampanga or Charter Change, which has indeed sent the Nation on an inexorable trajectory to strife and division, or worse, to give birth to nation for a FIFTH TIME by crafting a wholly new and radically different Constitution, by all accounts. Yet, when the Palace traded a SONA for FVR's lifesaver last July, with a promise to dance the chacha in exchange, FVR could hardly have imagined the audacity of the NO-ELECTIONS GAMBIT with which the Palace has literally thrown the ruling Lakas Party into a tizzy. For it is no less than a LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE to FVR and JDV from no less than a rampaging GMA suddenly feeling her oats and in no particular need of a couple of old Capos di Capi Re who've been nothing but trouble anyway, or will be. Not even YodaVee has kung fu that powerful, that influential with the Capos Crimini and Capos Bastone. Perhaps it IS time for the Old Guard to let go their tight grasp on La Cosa Nostra Filipina and not be so NEGATIVE about such innovative ideas for coopting all of trapodom as NO-ELECTIONS in 2007. What do these old codgers know about the complex radical brain surgery that must be performed to get to a Parliamentary Federal Democratic Nationalist Unicameral Executive Legislative Strong State anyway? Don't they know Chacha is a game of the Consiglieri and Contabile and not the Soldati and Capos Regime? Who needs JDV? Who needs FVR? When we have Sonny and Michael Corleone with all those judges in their pockets.

Will they go to the mattresses? I'm counting on it.