Controversial and absurd moves

The House of Representatives is really living up to its reputation as the more unruly and less intelligent legislative body. This is shown by the ongoing squabble on the position of Minority Floor Leader in the aftermath of the recent ouster of incumbent Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and election of former president and incumbent Congresswoman Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to replace him.

The underlying controversy that has occupied most of their time in the Lower House now merely revolves around the meaning of “majority” and “minority” in order to determine the group that will choose the Minority Floor Leader. Actually, these two words are quite clear and simple and would not require so much of their time and waste of the people’s money. In its most common and ordinary sense, “majority” simply means the group with the larger number of members while “minority” refers to the group with the smaller number of members. Taken in this context, the “majority” in the Lower House now are, therefore, the members who voted for Gloria M Arroyo as Speaker while the “minority” is composed of the members who did not vote for her. This is the smaller group who were outvoted.

But recent developments in the Lower House further complicated the controversy. It appears that the present majority in the Lower House, the supporters of Arroyo themselves, who chose the Minority Floor Leader as they retained Quezon Representative Danilo Suarez, one of Arroyo’s supporters. This is really quite absurd and more confusing. This is the first time in our country’s history that the Floor Leader of the minority group was also chosen by the majority group. And so as we “move on” it is not farfetched to expect that bedlam and confusion will go on in the present Lower House of Congress.

The sad spectacle that we are now witnessing in the Lower House indeed shows that the existing multi-party system is not working for the benefit of the country and our people and therefore not conducive to good governance. It emphasizes once more that ours is not a politics of principles but a politics of personalities. It also proves that we should shift to a unicameral than a bicameral Congress. The supposed advantages of bicameralism are not actually felt. The parochial tendency of Representatives elected by district is not really checked by the Senate which is supposed to be a body with a national perspective as they are elected at large by the qualified voters of the entire country. The quality of our legislation now does not really show that they were carefully studied. Our present Legislature is in fact more susceptible to control by the Executive.

It is really about time that we should shift to unicameral system. As pointed out by Father Joaquin Bernas, S.J. in his book on the Reviewer and Primer to the 1987 Philippine Constitution, unicameralism also has several advantages particularly in the “simplicity of organization resulting in economy and efficiency, facility in pinpointing responsibility for legislation and avoidance of duplication” of work. Hence this change in the structure of our Congress from bicameralism to unicameralism should also be considered in the proposed changes to to Constitution. It is worth the try especially with the kind of Lower House we now have.

The other controversial “news” that caught the attention of a lot of people and landed in the banner headlines of the mainstream media is the dismissal of Overall Deputy Ombudsman Arthur Carandang by the Office of the President because of  alleged violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. This dismissal may indeed stir another controversy mainly because Carandang was the one who investigated Duterte’s bank transactions when the latter was mayor of Davao City. Later on he said that his Office had obtained documents from the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) showing that Duterte and his family have transactions in several banks worth over P1 billion from 2006 to 2016. Carandang was dismissed for causing undue injury to a party in the performance of his official functions allegedly through manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross inexcusable negligence (Section 3 (e), R.A. 3019) because the AMLC has denied providing any bank records to him claiming that it has yet to determine if there is ground to initiate an investigation on Duterte’s bank transactions.

This dismissal is quite controversial because the Supreme Court has already voided Section 8(2) of Republic Act 6770 or the Ombudsman Act of 1989 which grants the President the power to remove a deputy ombudsman.  Furthermore, the Office of the Ombudsman is an independent Constitutional Commission whose chairman and members may only be removed from office by impeachment (Section 2, Article XI, Constitution). This latest controversy will really be a crucial test for the new Ombudsman Samuel Martirez regarding his independence from Malacanang which appointed him. And he can prove this convincingly by refusing to implement the dismissal order of the Office of the President.

Apparently this recent move of the Office of the President also shows that the much vaunted war against corruption being supposedly waged by this administration is not for real but only for propaganda purposes. Duterte’s oft repeated statement in this connection, that he will not allow even a “whiff of corruption” during his term does not ring true. Indeed, to erase all doubts about his sincerity in this war against corruption, the most important move he should make now is to sign a bank waiver allowing investigation of his bank accounts. This has been the clamor for quite some time, but up to now he has refused to do so and continues to ignore it.

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]