Shaded Glory: GMA dons glasses

President Arroyo may have had a little too much sun.

When Mrs. Arroyo arrived at the Manila Midtown Hotel yesterday wearing brown-tinted shades, many wondered if she had another photo session with Tattler magazine, which featured her last year with four of her Cabinet members as "Men in Black."

However, it turned out that she was sporting the shades due to an eye irritation she apparently developed a day after spending Sunday with her family, enjoying the sun and the water, at a resort in Palawan.

The President wore shades when she led the inaugural launching of Sun Cellular, the latest GSM service of Digitel Philippines.

Mrs. Arroyo, in December last year, effectively signed into law as Republic Act 9180 a 25-year franchise to Digitel Mobile Philippines Inc., allowing the firm to construct, install, establish, operate and maintain a telecommunications system throughout the country.

Digitel is owned by Filipino-Chinese taipan John Gokongwei.

Malacañang has instituted a policy that all franchise bills are just "lapsed into law" without the President having to sign them, or outrightly vetoed according to the recommendations of concerned government agencies.

This rule has been applied since the highly controversial allegations hurled last year against First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, who was accused of supposedly receiving bribe money for the recall of a vetoed telecom franchise bill being secured by the Philippine Clearing House Inc., owned by Pacifico Marcelo.

Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye even had to issue yesterday a press statement to explain the President’s shades.

"The President is suffering from minor eye irritation," Bunye told Palace reporters in his daily press briefing.

Pressed on how Mrs. Arroyo developed the eye irritation, he quipped that "anybody can have eye irritation."

Off camera, Bunye wisecracked at the end of the press briefing, "It’s not true that the President just came from her latest pictorial of the Tattler Magazine."