IMMORAL LESSON: Nagkakalat na naman ang Malakanyang!

In its latest fumble as it distances itself from a flawed agreement with the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Palace is now saying that its peace negotiators did not carry full authority to bind the government.

Do not blame the MILF if it explodes into another round of violence. Imagine being misled into smoking the peace pipe with negotiators who, as it is now being claimed, did not have authority to commit their principal, the government?

Kung sabagay, pareho na lang sila. The MILF also did not carry credentials as the true representative of the Muslim population in the country. The authority they were carrying was just the firepower of their weapons stained with the blood of innocent Filipinos.

(Immoral lesson: Lumads and other ethnic groups dreaming of claiming their own separate states from their ancestral domains will have to first arm themselves, get foreign sponsors, and sow mayhem to get anywhere.)

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BIG FRAUD: It seems both sides in the “peace process” were so carried away by the pompous titles on their place cards on the table that they forgot to check each other’s credentials before talking about carving out a Bangsamoro state from a bleeding Republic.

The funny thing is that the foreign meddlers, some of them pretending to be objective observers or facilitators, did not notice the big fraud being pulled by both sides.

While the government panel was given plane fare, fat allowances and fancy titles, presidential legal counsel Sergio Apostol said the other day that they were not issued full authority to sign the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain.

The Palace is now using this after-thought (that it forgot to give them full powers) to prop up its lame claim before the Supreme Court that the MoA, as it is, is neither final nor binding.

Jesuit Fr. Joaquin Bernas, dean emeritus of the Ateneo law school, was right pala when he described the MoA-AD that they had drafted and initialed as a mere scrap of paper.

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BAD FAITH: The question now is how and why the Arroyo administration fooled the MILF into momentarily removing its itchy finger from the trigger and sitting for a so-called “peace process” with bogus Malacanang negotiators.

The answer is that, as I said in my Postscript of Aug. 17, both sides were actually negotiating in bad faith — one party plotting to inch closer to breakaway statehood and the other scheming to buy comparative calm until 2010.

A respectable government does not do that, to the extent of even fooling the international community helping out in good faith.

That is what happens when some things as critical as peace, sovereignty and security are entrusted to rank amateurs who have no inkling of the implications of their acts and statements.

Malacanang should publish their names. But in fairness, it is the principal’s fault if it sends its agents ill-equipped and without clear instructions.

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BAD HABIT: The desperation is showing. To save President Gloria Arroyo from further embarrassment, locally and internationally, Malacanang is about to sacrifice its negotiators. They and their handiwork will be disowned.

But, judging from the tenor of the questions and comments of Supreme Court justices during the oral arguments on the MoA, it seems too late to consider moot and academic the petitions to invalidate the document.

The general impression is that despite Malacanang’s declaration that it would not honor the MoA, the High Court would still rule on the substantive questions raised about the proposed pact on the Moro ancestral domain.

This is as it should be. The Executive has this bad habit of embarking on something illegal or unconstitutional, then dropping it when caught and shrugging it off as moot just because it has stopped doing it. Meantime the harm has been done.

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JAIL ‘EM!: Malacanang should not be allowed to get away this time by its dismissing the moro-moro as moot and academic.

It is alarming that the gang running Malacanang would rather amend the Constitution to conform with the defective MoA than the other way around, that is, rather than making sure the MoA under negotiation hewed to the Charter.

It is high time the Supreme Court delivered a strong message to the Executive to stop trifling with the Constitution.

If necessary, somebody should go to jail or be pilloried in a public square.

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NEW CHED HEAD: The cause of tertiary education got a boost with the appointment of Dr. Emmanuel Y. Angeles — who has made a mark as an educator in the last 50 years — as the new chairman of the Commission on Higher Education.

“The job is not easy, but I am prepared for what’s coming,” said Angeles. Coming from a family of educators, he is credited for the impressive growth of Angeles University Foundation, from which he just resigned as chancellor. In tandem with AUF, which his mother founded in 1962, Angeles opened in 1990 the AUF Medical Center, now the most modern and the only private tertiary teaching, training and research hospital in Central Luzon.

Angeles had served as president/CEO of Clark Development Corp. and the Clark International Airport Corp. He is a Master of Laws and a Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science from the University of Santo Tomas, and completed post-graduate studies in Educational Management at the Institute of Educational Management of Harvard University. He is the first Filipino to become (in 1998) president of the Association of Universities in Asia and the Pacific.