Lovers Quarrel: Look Who's After Joker Arroyo Now

When Joker Arroyo walked out on the Senate Impeachment Trial of Joseph Estrada (because he was certain that the Senate would eventually vote for acquittal) he became the instant hero of the anti-Erap forces that later carried out the Edsa Dos coup d'etat. Then, when Hilario G. Davide Jr. abandoned his oath to preside over the Senate Impeachment Trial and put on the costume of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in order to illegally and unconstitutionally swear in then Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, he became the Saint that he still is today for folks like Amando Doronila and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, who now of course consider Joker Arroyo to be the Devil of Obstruction of Justice. The name of this game is The End Justifies the Means. It is the quintessence of moral inconsistency that in fact has resulted in the destruction of Separation of Powers and the very checks and balances among the coordinate branches of the Government from which flow the cultures of impunity and immoderation among them.

But I had a belly-laugh over two pieces in the Philippine Daily Innuendo today. First an editorial that sounds like any jilted lover's passionate portrayal of the Other as a scoundrel and most hated object of her animus (the said Joker Arroyo) and a threat to jump into the arms of an Also-Ran--in this case Panfilo Lacson. Second was the opinion column of former Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz, which offers an irrelevant and immaterial portion Senate v. Ermita as an argument against the invocation of Executive Privilege by the President. I think that even my amateur interpretation of that decision is more than enough to rebut Isagani Cruz today, so let me concentrate on the editorial, which advances the opinion, put in the mouth of another unnamed source that since Neri revealed nothing new at the Sept. 26 Executive Session that its confidentiality need not be strictly maintained or respected:

Senator Arroyo also takes violent exception to his having been reported as the instrument by which the Arroyo administration infiltrated the executive session, thus rendering its purpose impossible. To which, a fellow senator reasonably, in effect, asks: If there was no confession, could there be a claim to the seal of the confessional?

You know, I thought they were good Catholics over there at the Innuendo since some of the top staff kiss the feet of Mama Mary's statue on the way to work, but in case they've intentionally ignored their morning's Catechism Lesson, the seal of the confessional is indeed "content-neutral". A priest cannot reveal what is said, or not said, in the confessional.

Ah but how the worm has turned and the shoe be on the other foot. For unlike the halcyon days of their love affair, the Innuendo's emotions are bursting with tears of anger and frustration that Joker Arroyo won't play the old games of throw-out-the-Constitution. Nothing matters now but to utterly destroy and reject him:

The one in the dock is not the Senate, it’s not the media, it’s not the principles that permit the holding of executive sessions or the secrecy that should surround such proceedings. The one on the dock is not the Inquirer’s sources. It is Joker Arroyo.

Were the Senate’s efforts frustrated, because a witness was possibly browbeaten on the behest of a senator?

The purpose of executive sessions or any kind of official secrecy is to maintain the security of the state, the inviolability of legitimate official communications, but never, ever, under any circumstances, to obstruct justice or to hide official wrongdoing.

This interpretation of both the purpose of executive sessions and the nature of national security is the one preferred by those who believe that the Public's Right to Know is the same as the newspaper's right to make money on the news and their self-serving opinions. It says, the end justifies the means--the central fallacy that has ever motivated the Philippine Daily Innuendo.

Here are my amateur rebuttals of these jilted lover's laments:

Joker Spars With Philippine Daily Innuendo
Reporter's Omerta and the Art of the Kuryente
Dissing the Senate
Spying on Senate Session on Presidential Executive Privilege Was A Violation of National Security
PDI Leak Has Destroyed Senate Executive Session as a Tool of Congressional Investigations in Aid of Legislation
King Solomon Just Cut The Baby In Half
Philippine Commentary on Executive Privilege
Philippine Commentary on the Public's Right to Know

UPDATES:

NEW LOVERS Senator Jamby Madrigal is like a little kid who has her own set of the CAR KEYS and a bad case of attention deficit disorder. After issuing a statement last week that she was too busy with regular Senate work to attend the the International Parliamentary Union, there she suddenly is, an ex-officio member of the Communist Party Central Committee! Well, she's cruisin' for a bruisin', riding shotgun with those terrorists. It seems she doesn't even realize it was Joma's organized extortion and murder syndicate that called off the peace talks because every year since 2001, both the US and the EU have put the terrorist label on the CPP NPA. Who does she think she is, Hanoi Jane Fonda?

WHY DEMOCRACY Jamby and the Philippine Daily Innuendo editors need to attend a Red Chinese elementary school, where the BBC's recent episode of the "successors of communism" learning the principles and practice of democracy might show them where they've gone wrong--in the head and the heart.

NOBEL LAUREATE IN LITERATURE DORIS LESSING ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: "The phrase “political correctness” was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it."