LADY MIRIAM AND A JUGGERNAUT OF PACHYDERMS

Immediately after assuming her new post as secretary of agrarian reform under the Aquino administration, Miriam Defensor-Santiago was confined in bed for a few days with chills and fever.

Could this be because she was shocked at the powerful people she had to fight in that graft-ridden department including landlords in Congress and (horrors!) a very close Malacanang relative.

Insiders at the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) informed us that Lady Miriam's eyes popped with disbelief as she went through the list of DAR officials, many of whom were known to come from the landed gentry.

Her stomach was said to have turned after learning of the powerful yellow Malacanang relative protecting the syndicate behind the notorious Garchitorena land scandal, which had wrecked the Aquino regime's so-called "agrarian reform program."

People were antsy over how the fighting lady was to perform against these cocky monsters who held the DAR hostage because of cash and connections.

But over at the immigration bureau, all she had to face were cowed illegal aliens and garden-variety crooks who trembled before her. But at the DAR, she was in the big league. She cut the figure of a bewildered gazelle facing a juggernaut of stampeding elephants. No wonder her first statement when she took office was that she had more than a 50-50 chance of "falling flat on my face" and that she felt like she was Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom.

Well, that's Lady Miriam exactly where many of her political opponents want her to be, woudn't you agree?

(Image from http://isangpanata.wordpress.com/)