EDITORIAL – If you don't have it, you just can't hack it

Emergency rule or not, there is no stopping Filipino troublemakers from going abroad with a bagful of gripes and there, in front of whoever cares to pay attention, spill its contents in gruesome detail. If they can try to mount a coup, badmouthing the country is pablum to them.

But if they have to make fools of themselves, please do not give it the slightest patina of official color by going to the United Nations and there, before that international body, wash the dirty linen from the Philippines.

It is bad enough already that in backroom banter and coffee table talk we have become the laughing stock of the world without our homegrown political brats with too much time on their hands having to beg to be officially recognized for such a dubious distinction.

Whether or not these troublemakers have the goods on President Arroyo over alleged human rights abuses will no longer be of consequence before an international body that has long sniffed out the stench of forum shopping.

For if these troublemakers really have malice toward none but charity for all, they would have made their case long ago. Even going straight to the UN and there make their case would have earned them some sympathetic ear then.

But now, whatever shred of credibility these troublemakers may still have left will no longer be enough to surmount the huge crashing waves of suspicion and incredulity that everyone outside the country has come to regard the Philippine opposition.

And alas for the opposition, both open and underground, this severe erosion of trust and credibility is not the handiwork of anyone but is of its own doing. It has been traipsing about, trying to pin a tail on anything but the donkey.

The troublemakers have tried everything - impeachment, mass resignations, street protests, mutiny, coup d'etat, unholy alliances, religious interference, signature campaigns - and still they don't get it, that if you don't have it, you just can't hack it.

The lesson here is, if you have a tummyache, you either fix it yourself or you go directly to a qualified person such as a physician. You do not go bellyaching aroung the entire neighborhood. If you do, they think you are faking it and are only after some handout.