IT is supposed to be an august body, and we accord its members the honorific title of “Honorable.” In a bicameral legislature, we occasionally label the Senate as the “upper house” relative to a “lower house,” which we use to refer to the House of Representatives. Its members have national constituencies since they are elected by all voters of the Republic. Traditionally, it functions to distill, fine-tune and broaden the relatively parochial concerns of the members of the House. Its halls have produced the brightest and sharpest minds in our political history.
It is therefore frustrating to now witness how the Senate has become the site of some of the worst logical distortions to visit our political landscape.
In his maiden privilege speech, Sen. Francis Tolentino endeavored to provide some justification to the verbal agreement which President Duterte entered into with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The speech was, for all intents and purposes, trying to convince us that such agreement does not require Senate concurrence. Tolentino is asking the Republic to fully trust an agreement the contents and the details of which nobody knows, except the President himself. While he proposed that a legislation be crafted to require all verbal agreements entered into by the government to be put in writing, the issue that became his undoing was when he kept on insisting that the President has a monopoly, if not absolute power, to enter into verbal agreements on anything with any head of state.
Thankfully, Sen. Franklin Drilon exposed the problematic nature of Senator Tolentino’s novel theory. Indeed, how can the Senate, or the Republic, judge if the President had not exceeded his authority, did not betray public trust, and did not violate the Constitution, if the terms of the verbal agreement are not scrutinized? The subject of Tolentino’s speech, which is technically a fishing treaty, would require the specification of parameters. Tolentino repeatedly cited Unclos, but the convention requires certain conditions to be met before a coastal state can allow any other country to fish inside its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). This would include a determination that the coastal state’s capacity to fish is lower than the total allowable catch. This would require technical determination, and it is the burden of the Senate, as the partner of the President in the crafting of foreign policy, to ensure that such determination is made. Furthermore, the act of fishing within our EEZ requires technical specifications of the volume, species and location of the fish that would be allowed to be harvested by the other state. These are things that need to be ascertained, and would be impossible to be articulated in a mere verbal agreement.
Then came Sen. Manny Pacquiao’s turn to deliver his privilege speech, this time on the issue of reinstating the death penalty. It was really painful to watch Senator Pacquiao as he faced interpellation by Senator Drilon. Despite the visible coaching from his staff at the side gallery, and even with the obvious rescue attempts by Senate President Tito Sotto, who was presiding at the time, Pacquiao simply failed to deliver a knock-out punch, and in fact was the one who appeared to have been bludgeoned by the deft questioning of Drilon. Pacquiao’s problems go beyond his claim that the issue of the death penalty, which is not a constitutional issue, is also not a policy issue. Drilon forced him into a corner with Pacquiao’s insistence that the death penalty has biblical justifications, simply because Jesus Christ, according to him, agreed to be crucified even if he was innocent because it was God’s will for Him to fulfill His mission on earth which was to save us from our sins.
One needs to interrogate this line of argument for the simple reason that its application to the death penalty doesn’t add up. It behooves us to ask Senator Pacquiao what divine mission will a wrongly convicted felon fulfill for God to have willed that he be executed despite his innocence. If at all, such act will not save us from our sins, but will in fact add to our collective culpability in wrongly killing someone.
Senator Pacquiao, with the help of Senator Sotto, even tried to project that when the mob cried for the crucifixion of Jesus, it was the voice of God making sure that His son would die on the cross. Fortunately, Sen. Risa Hontiveros doused cold water on the idiocy of the argument when she pointed out that if indeed the voice of the people is the voice of God, then surveys indicate that majority of Filipinos prefer long jail terms over capital punishment.
And then there is this proposal from Sen. Panfilo Lacson, seconded by Sen. Bato dela Rosa, supporting divorce only when the one who filed will be barred from remarrying. This is totally blind to the possibility that it will unduly punish abused women who would divorce their abusive husbands. It will deny them the right to find happiness with men who truly love them and will treat them well, even as their abusive husbands will be free to remarry and potentially abuse other women.
And finally, we have Sen. Bong Go who apparently has separation problems as he finds it hard to let go of the role of Special Assistant to the President even if he is now a senator. He can’t make up his mind, and in the process diminishes the image of independence which as a senator he must project.
Senator Pacquiao urged us to just trust government on the death penalty, while Senator Tolentino insisted that we should just trust the President on his verbal agreement with Xi. But at the rate these senators are going, it would be difficult to completely trust that they would perform their duties within the bounds of logic and reason.
https://www.manilatimes.net/senate-irrationalities/597651/
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