MANILA -Don’t listen to Raul Gonzalez and sycophants, Rep. Antonio Cuenco urges Mrs. Arroyo. Good advice.

Mrs. Arroyo has recently suffered embarrassing legal setbacks against her policies meant to crack down on her detractors and opponents. She had banned her subordinates from appearing in Congress. She had given police latitude in inflicting harm on street protesters. And she had declared a state of emergency, thus giving the military and police carte blanche to go after perceived enemies of Mrs. Arroyo.

Congressman Cuenco thinks Mrs. Arroyo has had to eat crow on her authoritarian orders because she has been listening to Justice Secretary Gonzalez and others around her who can’t tell her that her policies are legally infirm. Worse, they can’t tell her her policies are costing her in terms of the people’s good will and the international community’s approval.

Shove them aside, Cuenco says of Gonzalez and what he calls sycophants.

This advice by Cuenco, an Arroyo ally, is good and solid, of course. But it misses the whole point of why Gonzalez is out in front of the phalanx of Arroyo flacks. Gonzalez serves as Arroyo’s lightning rod. That’s why he’s out front.

Mrs. Arroyo has become so disliked by the people, she needs someone around who’s more distasteful than she. She needs someone to take the heat away from her. She needs someone to distract people’s attention from her miscues and machinations.

And that someone is Gonzalez.

And Mr. Gonzalez appears to be a willing fall guy. He appears to enjoy the notoriety and popular disdain. He may come off as a buffoon but he seems to like it. Perhaps all in the service of his boss or perhaps he is just naturally like that.

In any case, he serves as a useful second banana to Mrs. Arroyo’s top banana. As Dean Luis Teodoro has written in his column, Gonzalez is the Arroyo regime personified.

I’ve written before that when then-President Corazon Aquino visited Washington in 1986, Gonzalez was part of her entourage. A random bunch of us Washingtonians had a chance encounter with then-Ombudsman Gonzalez, literally under a street lamp near the Philippine Embassy. What I recall of that encounter was that Gonzalez made sense in what he was saying about Philippine affairs.

Today, it’s hard to make sense of his mumblings. Except as flack for Mrs. Arroyo.

Take the case of the Batasan 5. Congressman Cuenco is baffled by the inordinate attention being given by the Arroyo administration, particularly by Gonzalez, to these members of Congress charged with rebellion. “Would its [the Department of Justice’s] actions foster unity in government?" Cuenco asks. “Would the same engender  solidarity and improvement in governance? I see not even an iota of gain or benefit from this legal adventurism. . .

These are vintage charges and reminiscent of Marcosian thinking."

Rep. Crispin Beltran, considered to be the Batasan 6th, is being charged under a warrant put out on him during the Marcos years. Now, that’s stretching things a bit, isn’t it?

Ah, but keeping the Batasan 5’s case in the limelight serves other purposes. One, it preoccupies the public’s mind, diverting attention from the weaknesses and failings of Mrs. Arroyo. Second, it’s meant to tell the public that the Arroyo government is going after enemies of the State, the dreaded Communists! And three, it ties up the Batasan 5, who have been stridently anti-Arroyo, in their own legal mess, effectively neutralizing them, especially now that the second impeachment of Mrs. Arroyo is approaching.

And, the bottom line is, Mrs. Arroyo can’t afford to fire people these days. And when she does, she only fires people who have minds of their own.

And so Gonzalez persists in his “legal adventurism” even as pursuing the Batasan 5 doesn’t make sense even to Arroyo allies.

That’s because he is playing a part according to Mrs. Arroyo’s script. He diverts attention from her.

Oh, how Mrs. Arroyo needs the attention taken away from her. She’s been in the hot seat since 2004. The suspicion and charges against her about manipulating the election in 2004 just won’t go away. She and her flacks have been goading the public to forget about 2004 and “move on.” But her opponents and independent observers won’t let the charges vanish. Many of the people, 65 percent of them, want her to go away instead. The people’s trust in her is the one that has disappeared.

Fortunately for her, she has Gonzalez to take the heat for her. He serves as a decoy, a smokescreen, a clay pigeon to be shot at to give his principal breathing space.

Lucky for Mrs. Arroyo, Gonzalez provides comic relief to entertain the public. Her other flacks, Ignacio Bunye and Mike Defensor, have lost their credibility and their usefulness as flacks.

Gonzalez is said to be knowledgeable in the law. That’s well and good. As I’ve said, he made sense when he spoke to a bunch of Washingtonians in 1986. But when you use your expertise to shield your boss over whom credible allegations of electoral chicanery hang, then it makes people wonder if you’re doing things right. Ask Congressman Cuenco.

Another personality who has got to be involved in the legal vetting of Arroyo policies is Eduardo Nachura, Mrs. Arroyo’s legal counsel and a former congressman. I thought Nachura made sense too when he participated in the impeachment trial of Joseph Estrada. But today I can’t understand what he’s doing in the Arroyo government, defending constitutionally questionable policies. I caught him on television saying that he couldn’t refuse Mrs. Arroyo when she asked him to  join her government. Surely one can refuse to support policies that are meant to harm or harass people.

People like Gonzalez and Nachura are in the Arroyo government for a purpose. The way “Ergo” sees it, that’s to shield their boss from criticism. And it doesn’t matter to them even if they look like fools doing it.