ACCUSTOMED, if you will, inured to the snail’s apparent adoption as judicial mascot, quizzical eyebrows have been raised over the swift turn of the wheel at the Supreme Court toward the temporary restraining order on the Department of Justice watchlist order versus the medical trip abroad of Rep.e Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, former president.

From Ped Xing’s discerning “uncommon haste” in the TRO issued by the High Court last Tuesday, other media observers have tagged it as “impressive” all the way to “breathtaking”. Alright, but why skip indecent haste despite the uproar it has set off all over the land?

Perhaps we can hold our breath for its eventual utterance on the heels of the TRO’s lightning confirmation yesterday by the SC “special en banc” summoned by Chief Justice Renato Corona.

The lead GMA appointee of eight justices in the Bench, Corona reportedly cut short his attendance in a foreign conference for the 8-5 “otso-otso” TRO vote.

Days before and after the airport spectable GMA and husband Mike Arroyo have made of their aborted departure, a critical mass had been felt building up behind Justice Secretary Leila de Lima’s enforcement of the watchlist order barring GMA et al from leaving.

The popular groundswell might have been whipped up by suspicion that the GMA eight in the High Court have committed, for sheer personal gratitude, to spare her from being sooner sued for 20 plunder complaints before the Ombudsman and electoral sabotage, before the DoJ and Commission on Elections.

On the other hand, the DoJ has been under tremendous pressure to prevent GMA and Mike’s party of 20 staffers from flight to Hong Kong or Singapore and therefrom to sites unknown but definitely without extradition treaties with the Philippines.

Regarding GMA’s purportedly life-or-death dilemma remediable only abroad for lack of the bone specialist-of-choice – De Lima simply would still have to be convinced that the former President is not using her medical condition to escape judicial processes.

Her doctors at St. Luke’s Medical Center had said earlier that the medical procedures to which she was subjected had been successful. Not long after the good news, however, complications were supposed to have set in that can only be remedied by foreign specialists.

But, hey, the Philippine Medical Association president no less and, serendipitously a bone doctor, has disclosed that there are Filipino doctors who can attend to GMA competently.

GMA may be really sick. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile who paid her a visit believes so, too.

Alright, par for the course then for a broadsheet editorial to ask exactlywhat must the doctors relieve her of: “Is it a bone ailment? A mineral disorder? Now her camp is saying she has a glandular disease.”

“Whatever,” said the PMA president, there’s a Pinoy doc for it.

The bottomline, I’m compelled to say, in light of the Pampanga solon’s and former President’s record in the reality check department – she’s difficult to believe and even harder to trust. Could this be what really ails her?