In Manila

BLOGGERS and internet message boards are seething with anger over a "guns, goons and golf" scandal embroiling a member of President Gloria Arroyo's Cabinet. 

It started over an altercation at the Valley Golf and Country Club in Antipolo near Manila on December 26th. Businessman Delfin dela Paz and his 14-year-old son claim that they were beaten up by the two sons (one of them a city mayor) of Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman and three of their bodyguards.

According the Dela Pazs, Mr Pangandaman witnessed the incident but did not intervene. An emotional eyewitness account of the alleged assault was posted on the blog of Mr Dela Paz's 18-year-old daughter Bambee.

Source: Internet

Her story spread like wildfire cross the Internet, with Filipinos here and abroad expressing sympathy for her dad and brother, and largely vilifying the Pangandamans. 

"This is a classic display of politicians using their power to get away with whatever they want," wrote Kenneth Ragpala in one of hundreds of comments on her blog. 

To be fair, both sides are claiming to be the victims in the affray. And both families filed suits against each other on Monday over the incident.

The online support for the Dela Pazs has vividly shown the deep resentment that many Filipinos feel towards officials in general who throw their weight around. 

Motorists, for one, bristle at the sight of luxury SUVs, usually in twos or threes, belonging to powerful officials or politicians packed with bodyguards tearing, sirens blazing, along city highways and country roads scattering everything in their way. 

According to Ms Dela Paz, her father complained to a golf-club official that members of the Pangandaman party, riding in golf carts, had cut ahead to the next hole without asking permission, a breach of golf etiquette. She said that her father and mayor Nasser Pangandaman Jr then got into a heated arguement on the fairway. 

"He attacks my father," she wrote on her blog. "His flightmates, maybe 2 or 3 of them, rush to his aid and beat up my father. My 56-year-old father.

"My younger brother and I could not just watch. We rushed to break the fight. My younger brother pleads to the mayor to please stop it. To not hurt my dad. To just stop. 

"His words still ring through my head....With his hands in front of his chest in a praying position. PLEADING. The mayor socks him in the face. 

"My brother defended himself. My dad is still on the ground getting clobbered. My brother is the same way. I try to stop the fight, but all I can do is stop one person. There were four or five of them attacking now," she wrote. 

The rumble resumed in the clubhouse, where she alleges the mayor attacked her brother again and two bodyguards with the Pangandamans drew their guns. 

A television news crew later interviewed her distraught brother Bino, a high-school student in Manila. Dried blood was visible on one of his ears. 

Ms Dela Paz studies at a university in the Unted States. On her blog, Vicissitudes, she describes herself as a "Full-blooded Filipina. Feminist/Nationalist." 

It is flooded with sympathetic messages. Prominent political commentators in the Philippines have also waded into the debate. 

Writer and broadcaster Manuel Quezon III, grandson of a former president, wrote on his blog: "When someone like Bambee Dela Paz and her family collide with official thugs, the collision isn’t just physical, it’s cultural. The set of rules that keeps the plebs in their place is never supposed to intrude into places where gentility matters." 

Ms Dela Paz made clear that Mr Pangandaman Sr did not take part in the altercation. But, she adds: "He didn't do anything to stop it. And this person...is a Cabinet member." 

That he was recently appointed by President Arroyo to a new government panel handling the peace process with the country's largest Muslim rebel group, made the story even more piquant. He comes from a prominent political family on Mindanao Island. His son and namesake Nasser is mayor of Masiu City in Lanao del Sur province there. 

According to Ms Dela Paz, Mr Pagandaman Jr yelled at his caddy: "They don't know who we are. Tell them who I am." If he did, that could harden the view that this was not just a hot-blooded row between golfers (and there's a sizable fiery Latino streak in most Filipinos), but a case of the "arrogance of power" as one newspaper columnist put it. 

As things stand, the Pangandamans have not given a detailed account of their side of the story. Mr Pangandaman Jr has reportedly claimed that he reacted in self-defence, alleging that Mr Dela Paz attacked him with an umbrella.