Weekend woes

It was the hard hitting title and teaser of that Sunday ad that caught my eye: "They are not fit to write our laws," roared the title. "The Cayetano-Pimentel position cannot be made the starting point of a respectable senatorial career," harrumphed the teaser.

The author was former senator Francisco "Kit" Tatad, who has found an at once valid and saleable issue, political dynasties, and has chomped down on it with the bite force of an enraged bull dog.

Tatad’s tirade makes a whole lot of sense, unfortunately for the objects of his ire, two senatorial candidates from the Genuine Opposition. Whether it will make a whole lot of difference in the polls remains to be seen.

Kit states his argument in the first sentence of the half-page ad published in several newspapers, this one included: "The fielding of Aquilino ‘Kiko’ Pimentel III and Alan Peter Cayetano as senatorial candidates only means that the ‘Genuine Opposition’ does not mind creating simultaneous dynasties in our exceptionally small Senate, in violation of the Constitution, the rules of decency and fairness."

The prose gets progressively pointed, Tatad’s ire noticeably escalating with each sentence. He calls the excuse — there is no law against it — "non-biodegradable (read: toxic) nonsense." This position, he says, is "immoral, unconstitutional, and in extremely bad taste."

The Constitutional prohibition against political dynasties is clear, Tatad feels, and the existence or absence of an enabling law is irrelevant: "For those who have no desire to play games with the law, there is more than enough law in this provision. But for those who want their personal interests above everything else, there will never be enough law, even if an enabling law existed."

That statement will shock lawyers but cause those who, like Shakespeare, want to "kill all the lawyers" to cheer wildly. Nevertheless, Kit’s purpose, in my view, is not to minimize law but to posit the primacy of moral considerations.

He adds: "Far from diminishing the constitutional mandate…the failure of Congress to enact the enabling law only sharpens the obligation of those who sit or want to sit in Congress to respect that mandate, rather than exploit the absence of an enabling law for their own personal advantage."

Ultimately, Tatad says, it is a matter of character, not intelligence, since "moral character defines a man much more than any display of intelligence." He insists that any aspirant for the Senate "must first be a man of character, whatever his level of intelligence." This means, essentially, that he "should be able to argue against his self-interest and his appetite for power, pleasure and self-aggrandizement."

But in his conclusion, where he jabs at those who try to end all argument by shouting "let the people decide," one senses Kit’s fear that "pragmatic" politics might, in the end, reduce him to being another interesting but unheeded voice in the wilderness.

People might really decide, he writes, but one who wants to serve the people must only propose to them what’s morally desirable: "He must not propose anything immoral in the hope that the people are ignorant enough not to know or care about the difference. Demagogues and charlatans do this, but not men of real worth and substance." Kit obviously believes that the two candidates in question are neither.

Most responsible voters share Kit’s positions, including lawyers, despite legal orthodoxy on the status of Constitutional provisions which have not been "brought to life" by enabling legislation. Remember the solemn Supreme Court pronouncements about the lack of an enabling law to implement people’s initiative?

Perhaps those are two distinct matters. But what about all those entitlements under the 1987 Constitution which have remained dead simply because Congress has refused to enact, or is unable to agree upon the enactment of, the appropriate enabling legislation. Does the failure to give legal effect to the principles suggested by those other unrealized entitlements also denote moral deficiency?

Kit Tatad raises an indubitably valid issue. If the Constitution enunciates a principle which all of us, by ratifying that Constitution, agree with, do these basic principles lose their validity — or can we simply ignore them — because successive Congresses, for reasons of self-interest or incompetence, fail to enact enabling laws?

When will we demand of our elected representatives that they get off their fat asses and either enact enabling legislation that will bring these basic principles to life, or reveal their true selves by telling us, once and for all, that they don’t believe in these Constitutional principles? Lofty rhetoric always hides so much hypocrisy.

I prefer to believe that behind the popular concurrence with Tatad’s condemnation of political dynasties lurks the hope that, in the future, a new breed of legislators will come charging in and demonstrate that this country still has men of real worth and substance. Our dreams, I guess, will — should! — never die.