Last Monday, on the 22nd anniversary of the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolt, civic, religious, political and other groups – from Metro Manila to key cities in northern and southern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao – staged anti-Gloria demonstrations, some yelling for Gloria’s ouster, some calling for her resignation, and others demanding truth and accountability.

These were triggered by the stunning revelations about the scandalous National Broadband Network (NBN) in which she has been dragged into its vortex, along with the First Spouse and key officials in her beleaguered administration.

Now, after months of futile attempts to set up roadblocks to the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee’s investigation of this latest of innumerable scandals, all packed with charges of corruption, overpricing, kickbacks, bribery attempts and even kidnapping of a key witness, Gloria has finally, if reluctantly, confessed to a sin of commission and omission.

She admitted during a radio interview a few days ago, she knew about what she called the "flaws" in the contract with China’s ZTE Corp. but that she didn’t stop the signing that she herself witnessed last year.

Well, she didn’t exactly say "mea culpa" (the guilt is mine), much less say "mea maxima culpa" (I am very guilty). No. It was a duplicitous admission, quite similar to her infamous "Hello Garci" admission of a "lapse in judgment." In the present case, she said she was fully aware that there was something wrong with the contract even before it was signed. She witnessed it all. She kept quiet about it for five months, but when the scandal was exposed in public she quickly cancelled it, a Pontius Pilate-like washing of the hands to cleanse her hands of any fault. Later, during the public hearing in the revered Recto Room of the Senate, one witness after another revealed the painful truth about that scandalous contract.

By the way, Gloria used the term "contract," but three of her official advisers were stumbling over each other in an attempt to shield and protect her from being held accountable for the anomaly. Her trade secretary said it was not a contract but just a "Memorandum of Understanding"; her justice secretary said it was an "executive agreement"; and her presidential legal adviser said it was "non-existent."

What an abject exercise in justification of a clearly despicable, stinking deal! Were they trying to head off what they must have feared in their hearts and felt in their minds and souls could be Gloria’s ignominy? But they are bound to fail, just as Gloria herself won’t succeed in stopping the surge of the people’s wrath with her insincere, if reluctant, "mea culpa."

This time around it may not work at all. Not if you will consider the rapidly changing political climate. The people, including civic, business, church, student and professors in academe, farmers, labor and activist groups, are hollering: "Sobra na, Tama na, Alis diyan!" And now the senators, led by Senate President Manny Villar, are saying that her "admission" could warrant new impeachment proceedings against her in July, exactly one year after a similar complaint was quashed by her political cohorts in the "House of representathieves."

When interviewed on radio, Villar wondered aloud why Arroyo owned up to a patently illegal act after she, along with her Cabinet alter egos as well as her military and police minions, went through a "grand cover-up" using practically the resources of her government to keep the anomalous deal away from the public eye. "It’s just like her ‘I’m sorry’ speech’ (referring to the "Hello Garci" scandal), but I’m sure it won’t pay off."

Senator Aquilino Pimentel looked at it this way: "What she did or did not do after she learned something was wrong with the ZTE-NBN deal on the eve of its signing is the ‘smoking gun’ that links her to the scandal." And other fellow senators echoed the same sentiments.

Not only this, Gloria’s credibility or what’s left of it, if any, has indeed become worse since nearly 80 percent of Filipinos, according to the latest nationwide survey, agree that she should resign, and that the people already believe the charges of corruption hurled at her are true even before her public confession.

And if Gloria thought that by doing that, including her ill-explained moves after the expose of the latest of many scandals in the last even years, would soften the public outrage against her, she’s dead wrong.