Fall of the house of ushers

In theaters, an usher is someone who assists the audience on entering the theater and showing them where to sit.

In the theater of the absurd that is the present House of Representatives, it would seem that witnesses summoned to appear at legislative hearings are not only told by the congressmen where to sit (by way of their name plates), but also what to say. This is “ushering” of the worst kind.

As lawyer for the achingly pretty Cassandra Li Ong, one of the resource persons in the ongoing POGO investigation, I have had my share of overtures — from the sublime to the ridiculous — from some members of the House prodding my client on what to say and whom to point to in her testimonies.

We have had the fortitude to resist these cajoleries, deceptions and manipulations, although my client has been made to unwillingly violate her right to be silent and against self-incrimination by certain scary creatures lurking in that crocodile farm using threats, bullying and browbeating.

We have incessantly complained about these brazen and brutal affronts to our constitutional rights, as we have in other legislative investigations in the past where I had counseled others. The Supreme Court recently (in the 2023 case of Ong v. Senate Blue Ribbon Committee) gave us its benediction when we, as lawyers, went to it for succor.

It was a matter of course for legislators in the past to go into power-tripping mode when controversial issues were being heard. On the whole, however, with the exception of Senator Richard Gordon in l’affaire Pharmally (where the blatant abuse of legislative prerogatives during inquiries appears to have started), there was a line that was not crossed — when fundamental principles of decency, civility and due process still kicked in.

This unwritten rule has been abandoned, wildly, in the Lower House today. Witness thus how hearings have degenerated into insults, name-calling, extreme prejudice and plain old browbeating, as well as pronouncements of criminal guilt, by lawmakers whose knowledge of the law is limited only to what they can find on Google and from reading self-help books such as “The Constitution for Dummies.”

One can only wonder why these supposedly honorable people have turned their backs on precepts that have long applied to the discharge of their duties. But if these people think that they are earning points by pulling out all stops in promoting a narrative that is obviously dictated by higher powers, then they have another think coming.

Results of dubious surveys notwithstanding, the prestige and gravitas once associated with both the Senate and the House have taken a big hit due to the antics of characters such as Reps. Fernandez, Paduano and Abante, and Sen. Hontiveros, to name a few.

The Quadcom, in particular, has become a big joke, and the revelations of late by police colonel Hector Grijaldo that Abante and Fernandez tried to coerce him into unwillingly making statements to advance a preconceived scenario regarding the purported reward system made by former general Garma may have proven to be the last straw in breaking the already strained credibility of the hearings.

So much so that the typically arrogant Abante and Fernandez have been compelled to “relief temporarily” (Fernandez’s words, not mine) themselves of their chairmanship to try and salvage the Quadcom’s reputation (if any there be left).

As pointed out in pithy language by former President Duterte when he made that spectacular appearance in the Senate a few weeks previously, such an act is indeed “subornation of perjury.” That, by the way, is the correct term, Congressman Fernandez, and NOT “subordination by perjury” as you so laughably said in public.

Pity that an institution that had regained a lot of its former glory under the leadership of former President turned Speaker Gloria Arroyo is reverting to its previous tattered image of a den of thieves and a house of crocs weaponized to persecute those targeted for political liquidation.

With apologies then to one of my favorite writers, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, what we are witnessing today is truly The Fall of the House of Ushers.