Gloriavagant

Media colleague Bing (Real name: Raleigh) Jaleco’s genius was once again at work when he conjoined the word that fits big spender Gloria Arroyo’s name appropriately and without shame.
Unlike the poor Filipina conjoined twins now fighting for their lives in a hospital which services they could not afford yet have no choice but to pawn their souls so they, or at least one of the twins, would survive, the growing demand for a surgical procedure is not that to separate big spender Gloria from her extravagance but to extract big spender Gloria like a rotten molar from the cavities of Malacanang.
Big spender Gloria has surpassed the much-maligned stature of the Imeldific, and it did not go unnoticed both here and among Gloria watchers overseas.
In a GMA website report, the New York Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines slammed big spender Gloria for her lavish lifestyle.
"As Filipinos in New York, this degree of extravagance from a Philippine Head of State is both vulgar and, unfortunately, familiar," the report quoted the group’s reaction over the $20,000 tab by big spender Gloria in New York’s very ritzy Le Circque and the $15,000 dinner in the name of big spender Gloria at Bobby Van’s Stakehouse in Washington. .
While both dinners for two nights ran closely to P2 million, various Malacanang spokespersons called them “simple” and not really extravagant. But who’s buying? No one, really, and big spender Gloria thus earned a new monicker as the “new Imelda.”
While the Big Apple is “home to Wall Street power lunches,” the group said, simple and inexpensive dinners could be had in New York without diminishing imaginary statures, especially one befitting a fake president.
If we may ask Palace spokesperson Serge Remonde: What is wrong with a $1 hotdog sandwich? And then again, maybe we should ask him what are definitely wrong with the two lavish dinners they have had in Washington and New York? I think he knows, but his job demands him to lie.
I suppose not all of them have finished their servings of steak in Bobby Van’s. If some of them have a leftover “take out” or “to go” in US restaurant lingo, some stale grams would have made decent fare for that old man who died in hunger last week while sleeping in a parked bus in some decrepit cavity of the metro, where, I believe, Gloria has not been since she become part of government service or even before it.
I wonder how long those million-peso dinners would have stretched if they would be used to support the families of the soldiers who perished in battles in Mindanao last week. Or would the jungle battles been fought differently if only those millions were used to buy guns and bullets, or perhaps used in intelligence gathering against the Abu Sayyaf? But we should feel sorry for ourselves and our soldiers, the caviar tasted good and the fine wine was intoxicating as the power they have now.
That power, stolen as it was, gave her the good life she is experiencing right now, the same one she accused Erap of living before big spender Gloria and her clique in the military forced what became the bastardized version of Edsa People Power. It’s the same power and privilege that she does not want to let go of now.
And she definitely knows how to push things further. She is now shopping for a used “presidential fixed-wing executive jet" worth at least P1.2 billion, a budget that would go a long way if spent for our school children or health care, than the presidential travels she perhaps intend to take in the last remaining months of her already extended terms.
Big spender Gloria sure has a good taste, and luxurious travels are among them.
In his report last week, Congressman Teofisto “TG” Guingona III exposed big spender Gloria’s indiscriminate spending that her contingency fund ran dry in supplementing her travel expenses. Her tab, mind you, was more than 100 percent than originally intended.
And once more, she wants to bleed dry the country’s coffers by purchasing a new plane.
Honestly, though, we won’t mind if that presidential plane would take her to Hawaii.
Or she better hitch with an American plane. ‘Twas proven and free of charge.