Strange bedfellows

Basketball fans all over the world have a bonus for Christmas. The National Basketball Association of the United States has finally come to terms, that is, between the players and the owners, and have scheduled the first encounter on Christmas Day 2011. Reports say the first game will be played between Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks. I think that is good timing, because most families by then, have already celebrated the religious aspect of the event from midnight of the 24th, and will probably be gathered at home for the traditional Christmas luncheon and get-together on Christmas Day.

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There is a move in the Senate to investigate the causes for the “debacle” or “disaster” – as sportswriters like to refer to it – that was the recent Southeast Asian Games where the Philippines landed in the miserable sixth place. What for? Do the senators have no more suspects for graft and corruption to flagellate? This will be like beating a dead horse because the games are over and done with, and we have to accept that, except for a few individuals and two or three teams, our contingent did very poorly.

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What the Senate members are carping about is how come the teams and players did not get the proper training that could get them past their opponents in most of the games played. I can almost hear the top officials of our sports organizations mouthing the same excuses about funding that we have already heard before. They might just tell the Senators to give them the P4.7 BILLION that they believe will be sufficient, and then to, ahem, watch their smoke. They should be reminded that even if some P50 million of the 2006 SEAG funds had been diverted to a private deposit account here, the athletes still won their games. By the way, is it true that the SEAG scandal is now being dug up because of the poor showing in the recent one?

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I hear it was the new senator – newly assumed, that is – Koko Pimentel who is trying to start a probe on l’affaire SEAG. Is he well enough to stand the hassles of such an activity, when he was reported to have been rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital only last week for a near stroke? He better stick to stress-free activities, like partnering with the Bacolod lone district congressman, because what may have made his blood pressure to rise was his role in unearthing the scams that led to the electoral sabotage case against the former president. But many are amused to see Pimentel and the congressman to be such close partners now, when the latter used to be the spokesman and defender of the former president. Well, as they say, Politics make strange bedfellows.

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Maybe it is also because of the Christmas rush. People are wondering why so many important things are taking place in a rush nowadays. There is the Supreme Court who seemed in a rush to issue the temporary restraining order that would have stopped the Justice Department from preventing former president Gloria Macapagal Arroy from leaving the country. Then there was the rush of the Commission on Election to file that ominous electoral sabotage case against Mrs. Arroyo. And still another big rush for the Pasig City Regional Trial Court to issue a warrant of arrest against the lady, that effectively curtailed any plans for her and her family to depart from the country. Was there also a rush to release that decision for the chopping up of Hacienda Luisita?

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Anyway, the “rushes” all seemed to have accomplished their purposes. Now there us a bill filed in the Senate that would defang the Justice Secretary and remove her authority to issue the so-called HDOs or WLOs from now on, and leave that function to the judge. I suppose that bill, if approved, will also neutralize the Order, issued during the administration of Mrs. Arroyo herself, giving that authority to the Justice secretary. By the way, for our foreign readers, WLO stands for Watchlist Order and HDO for Hold Departure Order.

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So where is the former president going to have lodgings, now that her doctors from St. Luke’s Hospital have declared before the court that she is well enough to leave and just be treated as an out-patient? That’s what the medical doctors said but Doctors, er, lawyers Raul Lambino and Frank Topacio have second opinions, and the former, especially, says his client may get worse physically elsewhere. The other doctor-lawyer seems to have toned down his dramatics, and must be just glad that he has not yet laid an egg.*

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