Left Flank

Manuel L. Quezon, III has a biting satire of a commentary about Philippines' President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's plight (the only female politician in the world more conflicted about her marriage than Hillary Clinton), as her advisers and the First Husband testify to Congress over the NBN-ZTE scandal. Quezon subjects her administration to Confucian judgment.

Confucius rejoined: Ch'iu, an honest man hates your hypocrite who will not openly avow his greed, but tries instead to excuse it. I have heard that the ruler of a state or of a clan is troubled not by the smallness of its numbers but by the absence of even-handed justice; not by poverty but by the presence of discontent; for where there is justice there will be no poverty; where there is harmony there will be no lack in numbers; where there is content there will be no revolution. This being the case then, if outlying communities resist your authority, cultivate the arts of refinement and goodness in order to attract them; and when you have attracted them, make them happy and contented. Now you two, Yu and Ch'iu, are aiding and abetting your master; here is an outlying community which resists your authority, and you are unable to attract it. Partition and collapse are imminent in your own State, and you are unable to preserve it intact. And yet you are planning military aggression within in the borders of your country! Verily I fear that Chi-sun's troubles will come, not from Chuan-yü, but from the interior of his own palace.

GMA's authority in Mindanao ('outlying community'?) is questioned. Troubles might come from inside her palace, but GMA is severing her lifeline to PRC.

«It's an offshoot of the political fallout from the kickbacks controversy,» said Benjamin Diokno, a former budget secretary and now professor of public finance.

Mrs Macapagal scrapped the telecommunications project last year but recent allegations that the government tried to abduct a witness in a Senate probe on the kickbacks scandal gave fresh impetus to the controversy. Last week, up to 10,000 people gathered in the Makati financial district to call for Mrs Macapagal's resignation. Former cabinet members are calling on incumbent officials to quit the government.

About half of the $2.6bn total worth of the 11 projects were meant to be funded by China. These included a $660m project to build video links to more than 26,000 public schools throughout the Philippines and a $380m project to upgrade rail services to towns and cities south of Manila.

Mr Diokno cast doubt on the government spokesman's claim that it has enough money to fund infrastructure projects, pointing out that government had been failing to meet tax collection targets.

The Philippines, which used to be Asia's second-largest issuer of sovereign bonds after Japan, had planned to borrow $1.6bn in official development assistance and $500m in sovereign bonds to meet its $2.1bn external financing requirement this year.

In the end, Quezon has another devilishly clever quote to complete a delightful essay full of opposing viewpoints: "Where graft is informally institutionalized in this way, it provides the basis for state organizations that are effective at collecting taxes, maintaining public order, and repressing political opposition but that may undermine the development of liberal politics."

If you take Chinese money, the RP won't be liberal anymore.