President to apologize?

A source who doesn’t want to be identified tells me the President’s announcement tonight will go as follows:

She will admit it’s her on the tape. She will say it’s improper but not illegal. She’ll apologize and banish the three amigos.

This was the game plan, anyway, as of 9 am this morning, but there is a division among the President’s advisers as to whether this is a good thing. Some are trying to lobby her to focus, instead, on destabilization. We will see which faction has the president’s ear tonight.

That there’s a hard-line faction may have spurred the release of this text message, circulating as of the moment:

Gen. Kardeng Dapat of CIDG is reporting directly to Mike Arroyo. They have 500 armed men dressed in police uniform ready to meet rallyists w/bullets. Assassination of identified anti-GMA personalities will start today. Crackdown will start after GMA’s speech tonight!!!

Obviously, I consider the first message as reliable, the second, as highly unreliable, but again, it’s release may be either a tactical move by some in the administration, or genuine panic on the part of some in the opposition, or as means to force the President’s hand. If the President does break silence tonight, it can be attributed to civil society pressuring the administration. Whether the apology will suffice remains to be seen, but it does indicate that the President is finally trying to meet civil society’s expectations that the President has to do something “dramatic.”

Jove has details as to how the President’s message to the nation will be broadcast. And alarming news: PCIJ blog was just hacked!