The framers of our present Constitution, rushed by the exigencies of operating under a revolutionary government, saw fit to reestablish a bicameral Legislature. Thus, from a unicameral Batasang Pambansa under the 1973 Charter, we now have two houses: those of district representatives and a Senate composed of twenty-four members elected at large.
The term “Senate” comes from the Latin senex, meaning “old men” (thus the related term “senile,” for old age dementia). The reasoning of the 50 people handpicked by Cory Aquino to draft a new Fundamental Law was to have a chamber made up of supposedly “elder statesmen” with a nationwide mandate to check the House of Representatives, whose membership would have a decidedly parochial concern, to supposedly balance out the legislative output.
The problem with such suppositions, however, is that many times, those making the assumptions pull them out of their asses, making them more in the nature of suppositories. If the authors of the organic act truly wanted to make the Senate a body of wise old men, they should have raised the age threshold of membership therein to 50, rather than a youthful 35, wherein those in the current generation are just beginning to establish families and have not had the benefits of wisdom and emotional fortitude derived from at least a decade of having a wife and children (the best catalysts for being philosophical).
Thus, while we have had our share of men and women full of wisdom and experience in the Senate (such as, inter alia, Juan Ponce Enrile, Sotero Laurel, Jovito Salonga, Gloria Arroyo, Ernesto Maceda and Francisco Tatad), we also had a bigger share of such duds as Ramon Revilla Jr., Lito Lapid, Richard Gordon and others whom I will not name, as some are friends.
So we have had embarrassing examples of purportedly mature and seasoned men and women exhibiting teenage petulance in full view of the electorate who had voted them into the Senate hoping for political sophistication.
Remember Trillanes walking out while being interpellated by Enrile on the former’s inappropriate backchanneling with China on the South China Sea issue, or Trillanes trying to bully Cayetano into submission, or Trillanes challenging former Congressman Jing Paras during a lull in the proceedings, or Trillanes browbeating Mayor Pulong Duterte into taking his shirt off to show his tattoos?
Of course, it was not always Trillanes. Gordon was another piece of work, hogging Senate hearings as if he were the only senator present. And then there is Hontiveros who is in a class of her own. But Trillanes lends himself so brilliantly to being made a figure of fun.
Very recently, another walkout occurred when Nancy Binay stormed out — in a moment of intense pique — of a hearing chaired by Cayetano probing the cost of the projected new Senate Building. This time, it was not a transitory tantrum, but an outrage that seemed to have outlived the moment, as Binay has taken the trouble of coolly preparing an ethics complaint against Cayetano. So much for esprit d’ corps.
One of the fears expressed by some senators in case of Charter Change is the abolition of the Senate and, therefore, the loss of a power base for politicians who are politically peculiar in that they can only be elected nationally but not locally (read: Koko Pimentel).
But if the members of the Upper Chamber do not stop acting more like spoiled adolescents and less like the Jungian senex dispensing profound political philosophy and Dephic sagacity, the people might just opt out of a Senate who are not at all wise old men but more like prematurely senile young people.
