When now deposed Speaker Joe de V delivered his philippic against them last Monday, and exposed for the world to see the dirty linen of all the seven years of her illegitimate presidency, the cheatings at the polls, the stealing and the dipping into the national treasury, ad nauseam, we thought his bitter, vicious verbal attacks would stir the political waters with tsunami-like force to topple her Palace into the stinking Pasig River.

No, De Venecia's fiery hour-long tirade didn't do that at all, most unfortunately. Not for the nonce for the time being. But just a few days ago, Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr., an important witness in the ongoing Senate probe of the highly-controversial ZTE-NBN scam, suddenly surfaced.

And later he dragged not only Gloria, but her husband and a top official of her Commission on Elections into what has been described as the web of corruption surrounding the transaction, a deal studded by charges of bribery amounting to millions of dollars.

After he flew in from Hong Kong, where he was instructed to hide by his superiors in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, he was whisked out of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport by armed government agents dispatched to provide him with "security" from unknown persons who had threatened him and his family. They drove him around Metro Manila and nearby provincial towns.

After several hours, in the wake of the big fuss in print and broadcast media, his "abductors" got orders from above to free him. And on his request, he was brought to the La Salle Greenhill's campus. There his anxious wife, sister and brothers saw him alive and well.

After some moments of soul-searching, Lozada announced to his family that he was going to tell the whole truth about what he knew concerning the scam.

During a press conference held in the unholy hours after midnight of Thursday, surrounded by a phalanx of nuns who linked arms to protect him from perceived harm, he spilled the awful beans about the ZTE-NBN broadband project in which those prominent figures allegedly got $130 million in "commissions."

Finally, Lozada testified before the Senate probers yesterday morning, and under oath he told all that he knew about the anomalous transaction. It was, by the way, the very same deal unmasked by the son of De Venecia. And which eventually led to his father's ouster from the speakership in the hands of Gloria's loyal political henchmen in what has been derisively called "the house of representathieves."

We closely listened to Lozada's testimony, which he calmly made with unvarnished truth about the sordid mess that he himself had witnessed, unaccompanied by any signs anger for the agony his wife and family went through during his hours of "captivity" by those fully-armed government agents. And he even shed tears of relief. Yes, so unlike the vitriolic-spewing philippic of Joe de V on the floor of the very chamber where he reigned and defended and shielded Gloria Arroyo from her political critics and tormentors for seven long years.

And now, one wonders if what has been happening, after De Venecia's tirade and Lozada's affirmation about the millions of dirty lucre, would now be the beginning of a bouleversement, not violent but peaceful movement, leading to the fall of the house of Gloria Arroyo?