Kuryente!

It’s one whole big kuryente.

First off, Jun Lozada framed the administration up with his Hong Kong caper and set up the PNP and Manny Gaite. Second, Ping Lacson set the Senate up for the shocking kuryente by Leo San Miguel. Somebody had been had. And in everybody’s mind, somehow, someone’s going to pay for that slap on the face of Ping Lacson. Ask Bubby Dacer’s widow. Third, the whole ZTE-NBN brouhaha is turning out to be on big kuryente on the Arroyo administration and, in effect, on the Filipino people.

Kuryente is a media axiom of false alarm or false lead. And the whole ZTE-NBN brouhaha is one big kuryente meant to result in several things: For Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to toe the American line with regards to her bi-lateral relations with China; for the Philippine opposition and people to be sucked into the vortex of US manipulations and for influencing the outcome of the 2010 elections.

When Jun Lozada dramatically barged into the Filipino consciousness on the wee hours of February __ 2008, he was playing on our sympathy for the underdog. When he in fact was setting us all up with his lachrymose mea culpas (how many now, by the way? It seems that he has this penchant for quickly owning up to a fault when he is confronted with one. I’ve actually lost count of his guilty pleas), he hit upon all the right buttons to gain public sympathy. Yet by now it is clear that he set Gaite up, he set the PNP up, he set Atienza and Malacanang up. In short, nakuryente sila lahat.

Now here comes Lacson. Throughout the years, Lacson had carefully set himself up to the image of Mr. Clean, a no-nonsense anti-corruption crusader. He has won many a votes for this (although FPJ’s admirers have not yet fully forgiven him for splitting the opposition in 2004, creating rumor that he did so deliberately and for certain concessions). In this same spirit he had doggedly tried to expose and, some say, bring down the Arroyo administration. He had a hand in almost all the scandals that had rocked the present administration.

Yet the crusader had met some electrifying mini-scandals of his own. First was when he was questioned by the fellow Senator Juan Ponce Enrile regarding his prior knowledge of Lozada’s plans before and after the latter flew to London – err, Hong Kong. The usually eloquent and poised Lacson came close to stammering and resorted to the detested line “ I cannot seem to remember.” And lately fate had been rather cruel to Ping Lacson, and that cruelty was named Leo San Miguel. The latter, brought to the Senate supposedly as an opposition witness, brilliantly and effectively parried Lacson’s questions and insinuations on the ZTE-NBN pay-offs. After red-facedly bearing the entire 12 hours of Senate session with San Miguel, Lacson could only say “You have been lying whole day” and meekly “Somebody must have gotten to him.” We e all know Lacson can bounce back from this as he did from Kuratong Baleleng, Aragoncillo and Bubby Dacer. Yet the whole country could never forget the day when the good senator became a victim of kuryente.

Yet the biggest kuryente regarding the ZTE-NBN deal was not Lacson and Lozada misleading the left, the right, the Catholic church, the youth and civil society – though that would qualify as another kuryente in itself. The biggest the kuryente is the American policy of intervention in our affairs. They Americans have long been irritated by President Arroyo’s playing the China. It began when Gloria sacrificed bi-lateral relation with the US by leaving the coalition of the willing n Iraq in 2004. She is also being blamed for the continued embarrassing existence of the Abu Sayyaf and the presence of Jemaah Islamiyah in Southern Philippines. The latter appears only to be an excuse to “legitimize” moves to make GMA toe the line with regards to China.

The saddest and most tragic part of the whole thing is the US view of the world as their own: that it is their right to meddle in ANY part of the world to protect American business and political interest. They have no respect whatsoever for national freedoms and they have always shown a proclivity to subvert friend or foe. That’s the biggest kuryente in the world.