The ill-again/well-again image of Ferdinand Marcos is attributed by doctors to a kidney ailment similar to the one that did not succeed in killing Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua. Still, Marcos has already had a “piggy-back” kidney transplant (the donor reportedly one of his children) and may be in much more, danger of dying from the ailment than Somoza ever was—a prospect that has prodded some of the opposition to produce a new “fast-track” scenario to take effect upon his demise.

The heightened expectations of Marco's imminent death have reduced interest in an earlier scenario drawn up last April in Hong Kong by six opposition figures: former Senators Lorenzo Tanada, Jose Diokno, and Jovito Salonga, former President Diosdado Macapagal (represented by Abraham Sarmiento, Constitutional Convention vice-president in 1971), Agapito Aquino (brother of the martyred Senator Benigno Aquino), and this writer.