Former Iloilo City Mayor Jed Mabilog probably does not know whether to celebrate or grumble.

On one hand, a celebration is due. Imagine being let off the hook on his administrative cases. No doubt it feels like a thorn pulled out.

On the other hand, he is put on the spot by the unusual prominence given the executive clemency. A simple news item would have sufficed. Instead, it was announced by the office of Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin at a time when the latter is in the eye of the storm over his flip-flopping over the Blanks in the Bicameral report Mess (BBM).

The ever-present but invisible spin doctors probably thought this announcement would take the heat off the BBM because the executive clemency would draw the flak - at least for now.  

It doesn’t matter if Mabilog becomes the object of a fresh round of scorn, ridicule, and contempt by those who fell for the gambit to divert the people’s anger and wrath for the BBM.

As the country knows by now, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Speaker Martin Romualdez have enough practice using people to their advantage and for their own benefit. Mabilog, by the way, has all the reasons to be grateful and none to complain and sulk.

Of course, it’s too much ado over nothing because Filipinos have grown wise to the ways of the Marcos-Romualdez clique to take their eyes off the BBM. Yes, the Blanks in the Bicameral report Mess.

As former US President Abraham Lincoln famously remarked, you can fool all of the people all the time or some of the time. But, as Lincoln also concluded, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

This is one diversionary ploy that has no chance of distracting the people. None at all.