“PATHETIC” is the only description that fits the reaction of Malacañang’s political affairs secretary Gabriel Claudio to the mass defection of politicians from Lakas-Kampi to other political parties.

“The more they gloat about these so-called defections,” Claudio reportedly said, “the more they confirm their trapo character.”

Coming from someone whose party had built its base by shamelessly dangling pork barrel and other largesse to targeted politicians, isn’t that a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

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In fact, on the same day that Claudio ranted against the “piracy” of administration party members by the other parties, the Lakas-Kampi executive director, Ray Roquero was gloating over the “massive defection” of 130 Nationalist People’s Coalition members in Tarlac to their fold. Now, talk about hypocrisy.

Unless there is a law that penalizes politicians who switch parties by making them stand from dawn to dusk in the town plaza, their naked bodies covered only with sugar, political turncoatism is here to stay.

The practice is as Filipino as forming a new organization if you’re disgruntled with the original one. Those who have been to Los Angeles and stayed there for at least two weeks, for example, will be surprised to find an association in honor of the Sto. Niño for every 10 Filipino families.

For organizers of the breakaway group, it has less to do with piety than with the need to massage bruised egos. In the case of the deserting politician, it has less to do with public service than with political survival.

Instead of crying foul over the supposed raids of its ranks by, notably, the Nacionalista Party (NP), Claudio should look into the causes of the desertions from his camp. Local squabbles over who should be the merged party’s official candidates were to be expected from the shotgun marriage between Lakas and Kampi but not at the level that would prompt no less than the secretary general of the League of Governors to warn about the danger of implosion.

Why the mass defection? Why has Sen. Manny Villar’s NP suddenly become an attractive proposition to politicians? Surely, it has nothing to do with ideology or party principles because no such thing exists or even if it does, it doesn’t vary substantially from one party to another.

Is it because Villar has the money? The self-made billionaire has made no effort to hide the fact of his enormous war chest.

On the contrary, he has flaunted it in many ways, the more obvious of which are the so-called infomercials that must have already cost him hundreds of millions of pesos.

But the administration has even much more than Villar, singly or with Noynoy Aquino and Erap Estrada combined, can lay his hands on. And unlike Villar’s, which he earned, these are people’s money that Lakas-Kampi can splurge in the guise of public works projects in order to win votes for its candidates.

And yet from what I’ve been hearing, many more administration allies are leaving in the next few weeks. Some of them are said to be just waiting for the Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) and the Notice of Cash Allotment (NCA) for their projects to be issued before formally announcing their break from Lakas-Kampi.

Claudio and the Lakas-Kampi spokesman have both denied that the party is disintegrating. No, it is only sinking which is why all but the captain and crew are jumping overboard.

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Paging Cebu City Sports Center Manager Ricky Ballesteros: your kingdom is stinking. Yesterday, the parking lot reeked of urine.

(frank.otherside@yahoo.com)