Kris the agenda setter

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When I opened the television set early this morning I caught laywer Katrina Legarda explaining over ABS-CBN’s morning magazine program Umagang Kay Ganda the legal means of rendering marriages void in the Philippines.

At first I considered it an informative talk for this country where the incidence of domestic woes is fast increasing. After all, most Filipinos would most probably be better off without their spouses.

But when I got hold of my faculties, as usual, minutes after I rose from bed, I shook my head at how Kris Aquino sets the agenda in Philippine public discourse.

The top caliber lawyer Legarda was explaining the rudiments of dissolution of marriages not because the public needed to be informed in order to be self-governing but because Kris Aquino’s married life is a mess and the public needs to understand everything that is happening to her.

Criticized as a limelight stealer, the first daughter-turned-actress-turned-first sister refuses to be absent in entertainment news even for a day.

When she ended her relationship with reputed philanderer Joey Marquez, she preempted what would have been more important news by appearing on the banners of major newspapers. She also made it to the top news when her marriage went in flux due to rumors that her husband, basketball star James Yap, had an affair with Hope Centeno, an employee of the celebrity doctor Vicky Belo.

When her mother died, she made a scene when she disclosed how former President Cory Aquino’s guards were withdrawn from service months before her demise. Later on, at the height of her brother’s presidential campaign, she figured in a supposed catfight with her another of her husband’s alleged relationships.

And just as President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, her brother, was to be sworn in as president, she announced that her marriage was falling apart.

Even now when she is supposedly on a vacation, “away from the eyes of the entertainment press,” she makes noise through her lawyers, saying that she is taking the legal means of untying the knot with Yap—as if such an announcement could not wait until she gets back.

In their latest interviews, her lawyers said she is trying to declare the marriage null from the beginning, the possible grounds for which are infidelity, psychological incapacity or multiple marriages.

Since she is fond of giving unsolicited advice, we have this to give to Kris: Proving that James is psychologically incapable of handling your relationship might get ugly. Why not let James file the case so he could prove your psychological incapacity instead?

That would make things a lot easier.

Image from here.