Dear Editor:

One has to be an incurable optimist or a totally clueless Simon, to ever think that the brouhaha over the National Broadband Network (NBM) ZTE issue is something that will die down soon.

The battle lines have been drawn between the Palace and Speaker Jose de Venecia. You’ll know it by the way a propaganda machinery has started to demonize the Speaker on his alleged “cornering’ of contracts and lobbying for his son’s company, Amsterdam Holdings, Inc. The next few days should find a plethora of more damning issues being suddenly unearthed by administration-type special agents against the very man who has stood by and for the Arroyo administration all these years.

Even Joey de Venecia’s past drug use in his young yearshas been dug up as cannon fodder in the emerging battle that could probably culminate in either party/parties being annihilated or, at the very least, shamed to obsolescence.

This is a déjà vu in the offing and never shut your eye one minute because it could happen in a flash.

After this, there is no way on earth the Arroyo-De Venecia unity will ever be the same again; in fact, it is, now being ripped apart piece by piece by the usual dogs of war who smell that Armageddon is near, or at hand.

If our fellow Pangasinense, Joe de V, is pushed beyond any loyal servant’s capacity to bear pain and shame, only God knows how he can hold on to his being a diplomat’s diplomat, consensus-builder non-pareil or rainbow coalition-maker image without breaking or flinching. He’s mortal, in case everyone has forgotten. None of these honorific appellations will already matter when both political and physical survival is the price to pay.

If the present national drama ever reaches its denouement, we can only remember the time not too long ago when a Chavit squealed on and put Erap in, to put it mildly, a tight fix. The rest is history.

What goes around, comes around?

ESTHER RIVERA
Calasiao, Pangasinan