My friend Jess isn’t crazy

Two days ago, I had an early morning conversation with my friend Jess, an articulate yet modest family man. While he doesn’t hold elected government position, he always has something sensible to talk about politics. It didn’t surprise me last Friday when he dwelt about his senatorial candidates Willie Revillame and Lito Lapid.

Wanting to know what virtues Jess finds in Revillame and Lapid as to earn his deep admiration for them, I held my tongue for a great part of our morning dialogue. Popularity to him is virtue! His Senate bets are undoubtedly popular. First he mentioned that his favored politicians are more popular than the rest of the declared candidates. They can walk on any street without prior announcement and yet thousands of ordinary citizens will ogle them while Jess claims that other senatoriables need to publicize their coming to any place well ahead of time in order to gather crowds. What a whale of a difference.

Jess claims that Lapid, the actor, always plays a hero’s role in all of his films. He crazily idolizes him. The movie characters he projects champion the poor where he is unafraid to risk his life defending the oppressed. He fights corrupt leaders as if he were the only saint among our countrymen and does whatever he can to cleanse the government of corruption. Yes, Jess, for whatever reasons known only to him, believes that in the Senate hall, Lapid acts heroically as he does in the celluloid.

The entertainment world of Revillame is different from Lapid’s. There are no gunfights, no leaping scenes, and no swashbuckling adventures which Willie does in his Wow Wow Win. Jess only sees Revillame giving oodles of cash to the impoverished every time he appears in his television talk shows. The dough comes from his seemingly inexhaustible funds and not a penny from our taxes. In the mind of Jess, he personifies unmatched generosity and unbelievable helpfulness. That is the reason he has become a crazy fan.

When he asked for my comment on his admired candidates, I tried not to offend his sensibilities. Nothing can deny the fact that Lapid is a fine action star and Revillame a source of daily monetary assistance to the financially helpless. I had to explain, however, to Jess a fundamental constitutional principle. The legislative department of the government makes the laws. This is elementary. So, following the principle of separation of powers, the job of a senator is to make laws. If the law is defined as a reasonable rule of action promulgated by men of competent authority, a legislator needs to understand legal concepts.

It’s unfortunate that both Lapid and Revillame, if gauged from the standard of competence, aren’t equipped with such legal knowledge as to be able to craft laws. According to his published biodata, Lapid is a high school graduate. Movie world beaconed upon him to be an actor. He may be good at memorizing scripts, but he’s devoid of any profound understanding of legal precepts. On the other hand, aside from being known as a television host, actor, comedian, drummer, singer, and businessman, there’s no report of Revillame’s academic achievement. For this reason, I struggled to explain to Jess that both of them aren’t ready to become lawmakers.

I explained to my friend Jess that we need senators with an understanding of the social and economic quagmire our country is in. Senators must know what ails the Philippines to be able to write laws that can address our situation. Lapid and Revillame (and still some others I will write about in coming articles) don’t possess the basic tools needed in legislative work. They shouldn’t be voted senators this coming election. To my surprise, my friend kept nodding his head. My explanation made him realize that his crazy fondness of Lapid and Revillame has no bearing in so far as electing senators is concerned. In the end, Jess recovered his wits with a commitment to campaign against these two incompetent candidates.