Nothing new from the House and the Senate!

Because of our newly-revised early deadlines, we cannot yet make any comments or assessments about yesterday’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) by Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA). But the long awaited big breaking news for us in Cebu is a sad one. I learned that House Speaker Jose de Venecia has been re-elected as Speaker of the House. No history was made yesterday. I’m saddened not because Rep. Pabling didn’t get the Speakership, but rather it is because the re-election of Speaker de Venecia means that the House of Representatives refuse to reform themselves. Reform has to start from them, but they refuse to do so.

We also learned from ANC TV what we already know that Sen. Manny Villar has retained his Senate presidency, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada has been elected as Senate Pro Tempore, while Sen. Kiko Pangilinan was named as Majority Floor Leader of the Senate. Clearly the Senate is in the hands of anti-GMA senators. Who would believe that Sen. Jinggoy would bag the most prestigious post of Senate Pro-Tempore? But what can we do, it’s only politics! It means nothing new is expected from the House and Senate. 

Meanwhile we can’t predict what the President would say in her SONA because she was just entering the Batasang Pambansa when I emailed this column. So many other groups for or against the President already came up with what they think or believed the President would say.

As for this corner, we assume the President would crow on her economic gains and achievements like her promise of a million jobs, which surpassed her expectations and the continued fight against terrorism, a fight that continues today, especially in Mindanao against the Muslim Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Now that Rep. Pablo Garcia failed in his Speakership bid, we can expect no charter changes (Cha-cha) via a Constitutional Convention (Con-con)? Under the leadership of House Speaker Jose de Venecia, I’m positive that any cha-cha attempts coming from de Venecia would mean shortcutting these changes, something that our people still do not trust Congress to do.

But like it or not, this country needs real reforms and those should start with a revision of our basic law, the 1987 Constitution. For instance, 20 years ago when the 1987 Constitution was adopted and approved, the salary of the President of the Philippines was pegged at P35,000 per month. Today, this salary is miniscule by Presidential standards. Why was it placed in the Constitution of this nation in the first place?

Why not peg the President’s salary with the salary of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) nation’s biggest corporation? I’m sure that this should be more than sufficient. But then, we can’t make any changes or amendments unless we go cha-cha. Let me just say that so much of our future depends largely on the political developments today. We can only call it unfortunate that we were not blessed with better leaders for the Legislative Branch. We can only hope that our senators and congressmen would realize the real purpose of their being elected into the House - to build a better nation.

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Exactly four years ago on July 24, 2003, Deputy Customs Collector of Cebu City, Edgardo “We-We” Lao, Customs Examiner Bennet Sorino and their driver Samuel Dejan were ambushed in broad daylight during the 5PM rush hour right in front of the Cebu Normal University (CNU) which also took the life of an innocent bystander, 16-year-old Allan Dave Ravina a senior at the Abellana National High School who was buying a banana-cue and wounded a jeepney driver.

I recall that this dastardly attack happened right at the doorstep of the Regional Headquarters of the Philippine National Police (PNP) which interrupted an Anti-Drug conference conducted by then PNP’s Deputy Director General Edgardo Aglipay. To date media has moved on to many other issues, but many questions still remain like what ever happened to this case? I gathered that supposedly the triggerman was pinpointed and jailed? But that’s the last time we heard about this case.

What we are very interested to know is whether the triggerman has “spilled the beans” as to who the mastermind of this killing was. Who knows if the triggerman is still languishing in jail or he just might have been killed inside prison? There is no question that the killing of Wewe Lao is part and parcel of the filthy of corruption inside the Bureau of Customs (BoC). What we would like to see is Justice given to the late Wewe Lao… or was his case merely placed inside our judicial closets and completely forgotten?

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