The winds changed again last night when Elena Bautista-Horn, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s spokesperson, bared a pretty bare bones plot to kill her boss.

The supposed assassination plot is backed up by a tip from an anonymous member of the Aquino administration and an opinion column by Mon Tulfo, that paragon of journalistic integrity who has quit profanity but still turns out shit.

“Alam rin po natin na lumabas sa column ni Mon Tulfo na sinabi daw po ni Secretary Butch Abad na kung pababa-biyahihen si Mrs. Arroyo eh mabuti na daw na barilin siya sa tarmac. So napagtatagpi-tagpi namin ang istorya na talagang parang may agenda na hindi maganda para sa dating pangulo, [As we know, a column by Mon Tulfo said Department of Budget Butch Abad said it would be better to shoot Mrs. Arroyo on the tarmac*]” she said in an example of constitutes quintiplemillion hearsay.  

Tulfo, whose column now features more asterisks than words, actually wrote:

What’s this I heard from the Malacañang grapevine about a bad joke made by a Cabinet official during a meeting that P-Noy had with his Cabinet over the showdown between his government and the Supreme Court?

Budget Secretary Butch Abad allegedly butted in during a discussion on why Gloria and her husband should not be allowed to leave the country: “Why don’t we just shoot her at the tarmac?”

If true, Abad’s joke was in bad taste, but to jump to the conclusion that this is proof of a laughably named Operation ‘Put The Little Girl To Sleep’ is such a leap that even Arroyo lawyer Raul Lambino, who has come up with a lot of whoppers himself, probably said “what the fuck?” before scrambling to come up with something even more outlandish. Like an alien plot to abduct Arroyo, maybe. Or that a team of time-travelling terminator robots have been sent from the future to take her out.

A few weeks ago, the nation sort of felt sympathy for Arroyo when she was kept from leaving the country even though the Supreme Court said she had. The supot stand off at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, where Arroyo arrived and left in a St. Luke’s ambulance/airport taxi service,  had Bautista-Horn, Lambino, and lawyer Ferdinand Topacio screaming about martial law and the death of democracy. And for a while, people actually bought it.

How dare the government prevent Arroyo from exercising her right to travel? She has hypoparathyroidism and a rare bone disease that could kill her if left untreated by foreign doctors who are much better than local doctors!

Until last week, when Arroyo’s doctors told a Pasay City court that their patient was actually doing okay. Until then, Arroyo’s people had been saying she needed to fly abroad for urgent treatment. If she couldn’t fly out, she should at least be granted hospital arrest.

With that cat out of the bag, Arroyo’s lawyers dropped the bid for hospital arrest and asked that she be allowed house arrest instead. Arroyo has since developed colitis, an incredibly rare and deadly disease that the rest of us call being poopy.

And since being a poopy pants isn’t really enough of a reason to not stay in jail while facing a case of electoral sabotage, her camp probably thought playing the “there is a plot to kill me” card would win them sympathy.

Except it’s not. Not when it’s based on two rumors and no proof. Not when you squandered away your credibility in nine years of saying one thing and doing another, saying “I’m sorry” for something that you never acknowledge doing again, and surrounding yourself with an increasingly shady inner circle of crooks.

With this latest claim of a kill plot against her, Arroyo’s camp is finally scraping the bottom of the barrel and has run out of halfway credible things to say. There is only one thing to say at this point, however incredible: Not guilty. And she should say it in court.

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 *Because, you see, this is Martial Law and she is the new Ninoy Aquino.