Sleeping with the enemy.

Byline: Conrado de Quiros

Civil society has every reason to be pissed.

I myself was startled when I read someone saying here the other day that Blas Ople was an opportunist masquerading as a statesman. That may be so, but it is a monumental exercise in selective perception. Who's the real opportunist, the opposition figure who allows himself to be bought with a foreign affairs position, or the President who sells it to him in the first place? Ople did not solicit the position, not overtly anyway. It was Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who came knocking on his door, like an itinerant salesman armed with Tupperware.

"Sleeping with the enemy" is the term civil society groups have used to describe the President's recent (mis)deeds, and it is not far off the mark. It captures rightly the unscrupulous and lurid aspect of it. It wasn't just Ople Ms …