No one seems to have given a high premium to the perfectly executed coup that booted out the former Senate President for one Alan Peter Cayetano to lord it over the membership of viciously conflicted worldviews.
There’s a kind of “fear factor” going on that appears to gain relevance only if articulated over social media platforms — be it of a fresh thought, or worse, mere afterthoughts. For instance, in the never-ending “word war” between Lacson and Marcoleta, the latter typically argues his case “fresh from the wound” while the former skirts his argument in typical fashion, often going viral (e.g., “It’s the rules, stupid”).
Some observers must have thought it healthy for democracy to have had that “regime change” at a time when the core issue of the so-called “floodgate scandal” has not come to a final resolution to this day. It was a serious public issue that no less than the President, on the occasion of last year’s State of the Nation Address, had taken some courage to announce with seemingly firm resolve.
The President’s forthcoming SoNA is over a month away and the people who have been robbed of their hard-earned money via their monthly income being taxed a scandalously whopping 15 to 35 percent realize that the government’s revenue stockpile is being stashed away by their national and local leaders.
Despite more than sufficient video footage of billions of pesos in “big luggages” being transported to whomever they were consigned, no one has yet faced trial, much less conviction.
There has been a whole lot of theatrics lately that some commentators regarded the Senate standoff between agents of the National Bureau of Investigation and the Senate’s security personnel as likely scripted.
It is of doubtful validity whom the Office of the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms was trying to protect when over 40 gunshots were fired, however largely undocumented. Was there any visual proof of who shot at whom?
This reminded us, however obliquely, of what happened on the tarmac that fateful day when Ninoy Aquino was killed with no visual evidence of who shot whom. Alongside Ninoy there was Rolando Galman, the alleged gunman, lying on the ground.
How do the people view the Senate outside of the competing narratives of the new majority and the new minority? Is the Senate still the “last bastion of democracy,” a “counterbalance to executive power,” the “crucible of free debate,” a “vital mechanism of transparency?”
When, by composition alone, the institution thought to be independent has swung the door open to siblings as if they have distinct, well-defined agendas or roadmaps for the future of this country, something must be off. Ours is a free country, all right, but voters have always been known to prefer those whom they can benefit from.
In short, a large portion of the voting population can be bought for a few coins. It’s where the buck stops, matter-of-factly. The vote of the larger low-income class or wage earners of the undetected “underground economy” renders the vote of the smaller intelligentsia (i.e., those with higher income status) a fly in the ointment. The concept of good governance resonating from the four corners of the academe finds no correspondence to prevailing bureaucratic realities any more than an “ivory tower” mentality.
Meanwhile, “walkouts” are meant to frustrate the Senate into proceeding with the order of business. The former Senate president, after all his cohorts had just left the plenary hall, moved so far as to demand to “call the roll” to technically show the lack of a quorum and, posthaste, invoke a “motion to adjourn” that needed no further debate. Ergo, this shifted the theater akin to Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Pray tell, does this become the new normal?
