Weekend notes and the Brawner doctrine

1. INQUIRER columnist Winnie Monsod skewers the decision penned by Commissioner Romeo Brawner -- "the gospel according to Brawner" -- for the Special First Division of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) unseating Mayor Robredo.

Incidentally, I caught the tailend of last night's newscast where Akbayan party-list representative Etta Rosales finally secured a copy of the party-list nominees which Comelec tried to hide from public view, but was ordered otherwise by the Supreme Court.

Brawner's brother Felix is one of them (although he was said to have backed out already). But what if the SC ruled differently, or simply looked the other way? If they had delicadeza, the Brawners should not even have entertained the thought of putting Felix's name in the first place. A case of the Avelino classic "what-are-we-in-power-for"?

2. Susan Ople, daughter of the late Sen. Blas Ople and Mayor Robredo's classmate at Harvard, weighs in on this controversy. The choicest cut:

Jesse bestowed honor to the country as a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee. He has represented the Philippines in prestigious international fora. He was my classmate at the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University where he wowed the teachers and our fellow students with his well-engineered mind. And now they are saying that this inspirational Filipino is an alien? Didn’t the Comelec en banc declare him as a natural born citizen in a resolution dated August 5, 2003?

Manolo, on the other hand, connects the dots and links it with Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay's own troubles, this time involving the BIR. Sen. Mar Roxas of the Liberal Party takes the cudgels for their embattled partymate.

Clearly, these are no isolated incidents.

3. If you want to read Commissioner Brawner's decision in full, you can access it here.