Housemates

They had a different sense of what House of Representatives meant. In the end, they taxed even the immense patience and generosity of Speaker Jose de Venecia.

For some bizarre reason, the so-called "Batasan 5" interpreted being in the Speaker’s protective custody with moving into his office with their blankets. While there, they ordered more than six meals a day not only for themselves but also for their families, nurses, aides and an assortment of hangers-on.

They were like unwanted relatives abusing one’s hospitality to the extreme.

Being communists, it is understandable that they are ideologically addicted to subsidies. But even the more decent communists know how to draw the line between subsidies and free-loading.

These guys free-loaded like the practice was going out of fashion. One congressional staffer wondered aloud how these "pro-poor" demagogues could consume so much food, especially for midnight snacks. I told them that criticism-and-self-criticism sessions, which Maoists do like the Angelus, could induce intense hunger.

While the "Batasan 5" helped themselves to the goodies at the Speaker’s office, they occupied themselves holding needlessly dramatized press conferences. All communist movements invariably develop personality cults. And the "Batasan 5" expected the media would lionize them like their brainless groupies do as a matter of course in the leftist movement.

Playing out the role of little Stalins, the communist congressmen arrogantly dropped broad hints they would go underground if things do not turn the way they wanted. They nonchalantly snubbed the inquest fiscal who humbly came to the House premises for the convenience of the contentious congressmen.

One of them, Lisa Masa, broke the ground rules of protective custody by leaving the Batasan premises in a grand media show ostensibly to attend to her "legislative duties." The police did right to let the prank pass without incident.

But the prank pulled by the publicity-hungry party list representative was an affront to the Speaker’s hospitality. Routine politeness is not something that deeply impresses these guys who spent the better part of their lives maligning everything in sight.

Speaker de Venecia chuckled when compared himself to the Pinoy Big Brother looking after his five "housemates." But even his incredible patience was wearing thin. His legendary generosity has reached its limits.

The other day, the Speaker shuffled the "Batasan 5" out of his office so that he could do his normal business where he should. The five had to make themselves comfortable in their respective offices – which is how it should have been from Day One.

After all, the Speaker’s protective custody encompassed the entire compound of the House of Representatives. The five could be in their respective offices and still enjoy the protection promised them.

But then, of course, if they slept apart, rather than move about like inseparable quintuplets or like the mob in that old cartoon series Wacky Races, there was danger that media stunt they wanted to pull would be grossly diminished. And so they stuck together like Eskimos lost in a tropical paradise.

Now that they are dispersed to their respective offices, let all of us taxpayers appeal to them to look after their usual needs without charging their upkeep to public funds. Let them dig deeper into their own pork barrels – which is now undergoing strict audit because of charges that some of the money could have flowed to the insurgency and to the coup conspiracy – to feed their friends, free-loaders and sympathizers.

At some point, they will have to convince all of us that public funds were not used to finance a rebellion against a Republic that ensured them rights and representation.

At some point, they will have to convince us that the democratic space offered them was not cynically used to advance anti-democratic movements.

At some point, we all have to be convinced that party-list representation is a sane thing to do given facility with which this method has been exploited by the intractable radical movements that beset the sanity of our political discourse.

Consider what the other leftist party-list guys have been doing while the "Batasan 5" were busy with their in-House stunts.

Last Wednesday, Akbayan Rep. Rissa Hontiveros was raving mad across the television spectrum after policemen removed her from a crowd of agitated radicals that needed to be dispersed. The unstated premise underpinning her rage was the proposition that congressmen, because of the immunity from minor suits that they enjoyed, are free to lead rambunctious crowds rallying without a permit and intentionally choking traffic flow.

She raved and raged in a manner that would make the hardiest political lords and oligarchs blush. The only sense I could get from all her angry babbling was that she was special and ought to be treated with great deference even if she was doing something illegal, like leading a rally without a proper permit.

Hers was the ugly discourse of palakasan. In her mind, the illegal rally she was leading could not be dispersed because it was she leading it. If you are a congressman, you may freely pass red lights, jaywalk at will and rally without a permit?

I don’t think these are the values we ought to impart to our young – although these are, indeed the bankrupt values held by what we routinely condemn as traditional politics.

I always thought I understood the discourse of these leftists. I am not as confident now as they claim special privileges while they incessantly rail, misusing democratic rhetoric as weapons against the democratic order.

The process of indicting the truly seditious is normally long, given the formalities of due process. If the Housemates truly crave to compete for viewership with reality TV, their only option left is to install digital cameras in their offices so that we can watch them eat a lot, sleep a lot and make tiring tirades that taxed our patience earlier than it did the Speaker’s.

I doubt, however, if the House version of Pinoy Big Brother will be as entertaining as the real thing.