Abolish the Senate?

There is an organized move to abolish the Philippine Senate spearheaded by a political party. This is a welcomed development, in fact, a long overdue one. Any observer of the political scene cannot help but be saddened by the spectacle of a lawmaking body spending endless hours and days in televised investigations purportedly in aid of legislation. Whoever invented this brilliant way of wasting people's money, of misdirecting the energy and attention of the country's klatch of intellectuals (and mediocres?) must have a hole in the head.

Where can you find a legislative body with a 4-billion peso budget coming out with only four legislations in a year's time? If this is true, as revealed by the anti-Senate group, that august body spent a cold cash of one billion pesos for every piece of Republic Act! And yet some 2,000 bills lie untouched in the drawers of that House, the output of more than 250 minds in the Lower House. These bills of course would become worthless pieces of paper unless given the senator's imprimatur. This legislative bottle-neck therefore renders the entire lawmaking machinery of the country useless, thus literally flushing down the drain the billions of pesos set aside for the operation of both houses of Congress.

But the senators seem utterly unconcerned. As long as they get media exposure as they grandstand before the camera, who cares? And as long as their 200-million-peso pork barrels are released, why bother? To be sure, there are urgent laws to be enacted. One is the anti-terrorism bill; another is the pre-need code aimed at rehabilitating the country's college financing industry; also direly needed is the law designed to strengthen and expand the renewable energy program, and equally important, the investment incentive legislation. These, if crafted into laws, would have had far-reaching effects on the country's security and development. But the senators simply love their "muro-muro" antics. These are free publicity, mind you, and like most trapos they are simply crazy about seeing their faces on tv screens.

One argument aired by the group that wants to sack the Senate, and we agree with it, is that most of the upper House occupants have been excessively high-handed in carrying out their supposedly fact-finding sessions. Invited guests are sometimes browbeated, even insulted, and when displeased, as what happened in the case of NSA Norberto Gonzales, they feel no compunction about sending you to jail.

Worse than these, is that the present Senate has allowed itself to be the opposition's instrument in its demolition job against PGMA. Remember the jueting probe? In that forum persons with shady background were brought in to hurl accusations against the President to the delight of the anti-Arroyo senators. Even some military personnel were enticed to speak against their commander-in-chief thereby eroding the culture of discipline and professionalism in the Philippine military. With its adversarial staunch, what good can the people expect from that House?

On the senators' supercilious ways, this writer has had a personal experience. Sometime in 2003 I was with a group of DepEd regional directors and school superintendents who went to the Senate house to lobby for the approval of the payroll decentralization bill of former Congressman Jose R. Gullas. One of the veteran senators agreed to meet with us, and we were ushered into a conference room where after a few minutes, the senator showed up. We greeted him but he did not answer. He took his seat, and dour-faced, he surveyed his visitors and started asking questions.

Somebody in the group tried to explain the importance of the legislation on payroll decentralization but the senator cut him short and bluntly told the group that our approach was off-tangent to our objective. When another official commented on the benefits to teachers of the proposed measure, the senator impatiently shot back, "That's neither here nor there!" And then he stood up, strode out of the room, leaving us all behind as if we did not exist.

Abolish the Senate? It's about time we should.