Batas Mauricio
OUR own senators seem to be nearing the point where, like legislators from other countries who engage in brawls every time they are unable to agree on certain points, they, too, are about ready to go berserk, and gang up on one another, no longer verbally, no longer through the power of their arguments, but by exchange of physical blows as well, on account of disagreements.
The hearing by the Senate Committee on Justice on Monday showed this inevitable tipping point, as it were, in the behavior of our senators, towards rudeness, godlessness, disrespect, and impoliteness, conduct which are ordinarily exhibited only by those who occupy the lowest, thus most bestial, positions in any given society.
Why is this happening? There are many reasons of course, but what the lawmakers showed last Monday night indicated that, either they were not taught good manners and right conduct by their parents or by their school teachers, or that their priests and pastors failed to instill in them spiritual virtues which their religions are supposed to have given them.
Or, perhaps, what these lawmakers did last Monday indicated something more sinister--that, they were willing to brazen it out with one another, in full view of the Filipino nation yet courtesy of national radio and TV, simply because they were in a mad scramble to push or espouse their own personal or political interests, unmindful of what really mattered to our country and our people.
I am saying that this last probable reason for their unruly behavior was truly sinister because, as high officials of government, as legislators who were elected by the people and who took their respective oaths to uphold national interest and defend the Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, they were supposed to be acting only for the benefit of the people.
Unfortunately, Monday’s session showed that the Senate is now divided sharply not on what is good for the people, but between those who are opposed to the government of President Duterte and those who are in full support of his policies. Our senators have been reduced to being mere rabid partisans, whose only care and concern was the interest of their principal, where that principal was not even the Filipino people.
Indeed, Senate and House of Representatives hearings are no longer occasions to find out how legislation could be arrived at to remedy defects or imperfections in government policies or procedures. They have become mere hearings in aid of re-election as many have been pointing out, or hearings to embarrass, humiliate, or vex targeted personalities.
What is worse is that, the protagonists who want to hug the microphone all to themselves could not even talk in perfect English or even in perfect Filipino. Then, most of the time, their thoughts are so hopelessly and shamelessly incoherent and jumbled that, even if they have already been speaking for a long time, the listening or viewing public still find it impossible to figure what they have been trying to say.
What did the Filipino people do to deserve these clowns and their loony antics? True, a nation deserve the leaders that they elect. If we have senators and congressmen who behave like they are entitled to waste the people’s time and resources, it must only be because they think that those who voted them were stupid enough in the first place not to realize that politicians in this country, whether they be of the red or yellow varieties, are mere clowns and truly lunatic.
E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com
