HOW lucky can some people get.

        Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, the greenhorn soldier who screwed a young inebriated Filipina whose fault was having one too many (pun not intended) in a bar, was suddenly sprang out from his Makati prison cell in the dead of the night by seasoned US security officers and a DILG custodial team.

        Disgraced Comelec Commisisoner Virgilio Garcillano a quintessential cheat whose face we hate to see remains to be the irrefutable argument why election in the Philippines is a farce. Without qualm, he is rearing to be the administration congressional candidate in his home province of Bukidnon. The other bad news is that it looks like he will win the polls hands down (or under the table, so to speak) for after all he was not a Comelec commissioner for nothing. It is payback time for this man who aided this and that candidate to win an election, including the President. His battle cry? Honesty.

        Mrs. Lilia Pineda, the obese wife of jueteng lord Bong, too, has been vaunted as the administration’s standard-bearer for the gubernatorial race in Pampanga, the president’s home province. Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda, tagged by Congress as the biggest of all jueteng lords in the country has been seen showing up in political gatherings to endorse the candidacy of his wife. This, even as a Senate inquiry has alleged that underground jueteng operations have grown by the millions under the Arroyo administration. As Archbishop Oscar Cruz of the “Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Jueteng” has warned, these jueteng lords are “the ones who corrupt our election process” so much so that they have gone a step higher by parading themselves as pro-administration candidates. Chances are, Bong’s wife will win because, you know, they have the wherewithal to terrorize and buy votes, which notoriety they have been doing to install corrupt candidates to office. What goes around comes around, or is it a case of the world turning upside down in our God-forsaken country called the Philippines?

        Meanwhile, nothing is heard of Jocjoc Volante, the DA bagman who has yet to account for billions of pesos in fertilizer fund scam. Still, suspects in political killings are roaming scot-free, their smoking guns tucked on their waists waiting orders for their next victims as election period nears.

        Now supposedly languishing in the ennui of luxurious “house” arrest inside the US embassy, a foreign territory, the convicted rapist is virtually a free man, away from the claws of our Philippine judicial and penology system. We could not imagine how much time, resources, diplomatic trade-offs and political risks were spent between Malacanang and the US Embassy to save the balls of a boy who couldn’t handle his libido. As diplomatic legalese would have it, Smith’s transfer from the Makati City jail to the US Embassy was in keeping with the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement, which stipulates US custody of accused American military personnel during the trial and when the case is on appeal.

        President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who throughout her incumbency has been accused of coddling robbers, gamblers, and cheats defends Smith’s helluva safe escape from prison: “The government had to take this action in order to forestall the further deterioration in our strategic relationship with the United States, which was being rapidly eroded by our noncompliance with the [VFA}.”

        Huh?