Tiglao called ‘verbal contortionist’

Master sophist, prevaricator and verbal contortionist Rigoberto Tiglao was at it again with his “Hacienda Luisita’s day of infamy.” (Inquirer, 12/15/11) He talked of extreme haste in Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeachment, but showed amnesia about the Corona Court’s now infamous TRO, which was surreptitiously telegraphed to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo by her “Supreme Court” so she could catch a plane out of the country and escape criminal prosecution.

Tiglao added more trash when he wrote of President Aquino “breaking” the constitutionally inviolate walls dividing the three branches of government to attack the head of (ahem!) “the bedrock of the country’s Rule of Law, the Supreme Court.” The Corona or Arroyo Court, Tiglao could have named it more aptly.

Then came the usual sophist’s contumely: “It appears beyond the congressmen’s intellect that the Supreme Court’s decisions are collegial, not that of the Chief Justice alone…”

Collegial? Did Tiglao refer to the body, the majority of whose members are Arroyo appointees? Hello! And the man really rubbed it in with his pronouncement that “the allegations of Corona’s bias ‘collapses’ in the reality that in these cases, the decisions were either unanimous, or made by the overwhelming majority of justices.” Did Tiglao say “unanimous”? “Overwhelming majority”?

On the subject of Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, the Arroyo “spokesman” Tiglao had this to say: “The speaker is as truthful as he is servile to Aquino.” Would that one could say the same about Tiglao. Of him we could perhaps say that this former street parliamentarian has immensely outgrown… his truthfulness.

Toward the end, Tiglao rattled on about Corona on his big, white steed coming to the rescue of Hacienda Luisita employees, and the “short deadline” for Mr. Aquino to “boot out a CJ, put in place a new one, and get the now terrorized Court to favor the Cojuangcos, hence the brazen, arrogant rush…” etc., etc., etc.

We “guys” have long been “taken for a ride” ever since an illegally appointed Chief Justice ran off with a string of “swing decisions” favoring his “Boss-Ma’am,” when he so easily could have declined his appointment, out of delicadeza.

But then, Tiglao and his ilk are intellectually incapable of understanding the word! Tiglao’s “epic” is truly epic in its utter lack of originality, or to put it another way, in its original “truthfulness.” It is epic “TRAPOgraphy.”

—BOBBY GONZALEZ KRAUT,

[email protected]