Celebrity and notoriety

Last Friday I joked that Alice Guo was on her way to the Commission on Elections – not to face her disqualification case for faking her Philippine citizenship, but to file her certificate of candidacy for the Senate in 2025.

The scary part was that several people thought I wasn’t joking. And the scariest part was that some of them thought she might win.

This was after they saw all those viral videos and photos of our law enforcement officials giddily taking selfies with Guo in Jakarta where she was turned over by Indonesian authorities to the top-level Philippine delegation that picked her up and escorted her back to Manila on a chartered jet.

Little wonder that the dismissed mayor of Bamban, Tarlac looked as ecstatic as her escorts, striking cutesy poses like a K-drama star between the secretary of the interior and the chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP).

Oh well, maybe she was genuinely thrilled that Secretary Benhur Abalos and Gen. Rommel Marbil had chartered a plane ASAP to personally pick her up from Indonesia.

Her legal team’s spin was that Guo had feared for her life, and was relieved to have been caught and turned over safely to Philippine authorities. She felt so safe that she eschewed posting bail and remained in PNP custody. (Her lawyers had a more valid explanation: she still faces non-bailable cases, so it’s pointless to post bail for her graft case in Capas, Tarlac.)

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Speaking of graft, some spoilsports called out Abalos for the cost of chartering a private jet to Jakarta and back. He explained that the flight did not cost taxpayers a single cent since the plane was provided by a private benefactor whom he did not identify.

The spoilsports pointed out (correctly) that government officials are prohibited from accepting such favors from the private sector under Republic Act 6713, the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees.

President Marcos, who also has a penchant for traveling on private jets for watching the Formula One in Singapore, can be expected to brush aside such criticisms of the conduct of one of his alter egos.

BBM appeared amused by his security officials’ photo ops with Guo,