Abolition of Senate sought

A political party headed by national security adviser Norberto Gonzales is seeking the abolition of the Senate for allegedly being "inutile" and for "wasting government resources for useless investigations."

The Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas, one of the top five political parties registered with the Commission on Elections, will formally launch in Cebu on Saturday a nationwide campaign for the abolition of the Senate.

Former Siquijor mayor Fidelito Avanzado, who heads the party's political and electoral committee and at the same time acts as convenor of the movement, cited several reasons in calling for the scrapping of the upper chamber of Congress.

He said the Senate is inutile saying it only passed four pieces of legislation since the 13th Congress started despite the more than 2,000 bills waiting to be passed. According to Avanzado, the Senate was only good at grandstanding by conducting more than 300 investigations supposed to be in aid of legislation.

Avanzado also said the Senate has been spending too much of the people's money. He noted that P4 billion had already been spent for the past one year with only four laws passed. This means that for every law enacted, the Senate spent P1 billion.

He also tagged the Senate of being impolite and a human rights violator when it ordered the detention of Gonzales after the latter was cited for contempt because of his refusal to divulge the names of the donors who paid for the contract he entered into on behalf of the country with a lobby firm abroad to source for funding for the proposal to amend the Constitution.

Avanzado added that the Senate investigations conducted by the Senate were illegal because the rules and procedures as provided for in Section 21 of the Constitution weren't followed. Such was exposed when Sen. Joker Arroyo failed to submit to the Supreme Court the rules that the Senate follows in conducting investigations, Avanzado pointed out.

Further, he said the Senate was very clever to preempt the Supreme Court's ruling on the petition for habeas corpus that they filed for Gonzales when it ordered his release before the High Court could rule on the issue.

Avanzado announced Gonzales will be in Cebu on Saturday to attend the meeting of the party members which will be held at the Metro Cebu Water District auditorium. Avanzado however said that Gonzales has nothing to do with their decision to launch a nationwide campaign for the abolition of the Senate.

He said that it is about time to get rid of the Senate, which he said, has a very poor performance. This accusation was supported by the Senate Performance Report Card in 2003 that showed of a zero performance rating of the Senate, and yet P6.1 billion in funds was spent. - Fred P. Languido