Malacañang is again up to its old tricks. On deck is the usual "guess-under-which-cup-the-pea-is hidden" trick which has failed to amuse us time and again. We are being told for the nth time that we must revise the Constitution. This time, however, it is not to change the form of government from the present one into a parliamentary one in which she will be the prime minister. That failed before, of course. So, she will try something else this time around? Neither is Malacañang now talking about rewriting the charter to make it easier to reach our development goals. That, too, had been tried before and had failed.

No. This time around, the Constitution will be amended so that we can have peace in Mindanao. Wowee! We have been fighting with many of our Muslim brothers for decades, even centuries (if we include the Spanish period) and all that we need to do to have peace with them is a tiny Constitutional change? Imagine that!

Says Jesus Dureza, presidential adviser on the peace process: "This is one of the proposals the government is looking at to get the peace talks moving again."

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita says: "If this will help peace talks and governance in Mindanao, why not?’’

"Many leaders there are opting for federalism,’’ adds Ermita.

Fortunately for us all, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) with whom the government is in negotiations for a permanent peace in Mindanao is smart enough not to allow the government to make them the excuse for a Charter Change that will, in all probability, also change the form of government while the changes to the charter are being debated.

The MILF is only one of at least three major groups that want an independent Islamic homeland in Mindanao but it is the one with the loudest voice and the most organized armed group. The MILF clarified that it is not asking the government to violate its own Constitution to give the country’s Muslim minority such homeland. The others are: The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Abu Sayyaf. All of these groups have links to al-Qaeda and Bin Laden, the number one Islamic terrorist in the world.

One has to agree with the MILF that the government, under the present Constitution, could still deliver its commitments to them and the so-called Bangsamoro people.

The MILF predicts that 2008 will be a very grim year for the peace process after the Arroyo administration reneged on the consensus points on ancestral domain, which the two parties have j "crafted, agreed, and signed" in December 2004.

There lies the problem that the government has created for itself. It over-promised during the negotiations (probably from a lack of resolve on its part and its reliance on political rather than real commitments to the Muslims. Now, not really to achieve its agenda for peace in Mindanao but more perhaps to have another go at charter change, it is saying that what must be done to find that elusive peace is to change the Constitution.

This is old hat and yesterday’s hit parade. Again, it will try once more for the same charter change it has tried for in the last two years, which we have all rejected outright and which the MILF itself rejects as unnecessary to have a peace agreement.

The MILF stopped talking when the government insisted that the creation of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), which would be practically a free state within the Philippines, had to be subjected to a plebiscite, in accordance with the 1987 Constitution.

Khaled Musa, deputy chair of the MILF’s committee on information says: "This is a deceptive offer and only a fool would not see the trick behind it.

"Symbols are deceptive and only the content or parts can determine the true nature of things. We are tired of these endless manipulations," he said.

My own problem with giving the Muslims control over what they consider as their ancestral domain is the fear that this will not, in any way, alleviate the plight of the ordinary Muslim but that it may even give him a harder time of it when the traditional leaders take over these lands, not for the Bangsamoro people but, as the elite in this country – Muslim or Christian – have done since even before the time that the Europeans first arrived, for themselves.

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Marikina City Rep. Marcelino Teodoro wants nutrition labels not only on grocery items but also for restaurant food, particularly fast food chains. Yes, and why not go a little further and also add warnings – as in cigarettes – about what could be harmful to one’s health in the food that one is buying.

One useful example in how this can help the consumer are warnings that the food one is about to partake has been cooked in hydrogenated fat. What is this?

During manufacturing, liquid oils have hydrogen bubbled through them in a process called hydrogenation to improve their texture, flavor and shelf life. The resulting product is a more solid fat, called hydrogenated fat or hydrogenated vegetable oil. These contain trans fats, which are murder for those with any heart disease and can cause both heart disease and elevated blood pressure. Trans fats lower your HDL (good) cholesterol and increase your LDL (bad) cholesterol.

Is this what fast food restaurants use for cooking? You bet that it is!