Stranger than fiction

If Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano and his cohorts in the Senate minority wanted to rile the people even more, they couldn't have done it better than by having Cayetano challenge Sen.

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Tito Sotto for the Senate presidency, at the same time that he was floating his supposedly heroic idea of having all elective officials resign because the public was fed up with them.

He had to know that that was exactly the kind of antic that made people throw up at the mention of certain names - a dubious pantheon of the corrupt, the bought and the compromised. But he did it anyway, employing his imagination to yank public attention away from the burning issue of the hour the massive flood control scam and its ties to many lawmakers in the direction of Mars, and the possibility of honest (never mind intelligent) politicians inhabiting that planet.

Why he did that is anyone's guess, but mine would be that anything to stop the momentum building up at the Blue Ribbon committee under Sen. Ping Lacson was good for the minority, many of whom were increasingly being threatened by the exposure. If Cayetano had resigned first (and forthwith!) to provide proof positive of his noble intentions, the distraction would have been worth our time, but of course that was never part of the plan.

The plot to unseat Sotto - brazen and shameless in its purpose-was more credible and worrisome. It fizzled out, but remains potent, simmering just beneath the surface.

Lacson's resignation as BRC chair was probably a concession to forestall Sotto's, but the situation in the Senate is so volatile that it can't take much for the leadership to switch while we're brushing our teeth.