The royalty in a congressman
The other day I was "multi-tasking," a term which, I gather, means doing two or more things at the same time. I was checking notebooks in Constitutional Law, playing old records on my 1981 vintage stereo components and changing TV channels looking for news. It was when Teddy Randazzo's The Way of A Clown was playing when I chanced upon a footage of our congress in action.
The clown-congress coincidence appeared somewhat symbolic and let me say why.
Ilocano Representative Rodulfo Fariñas wants to add a halo to the congressmen's crown that is already golden as it is grotesquely unaware that his move looked more foolhardy than wise. He is on course to make our legislators a distinct class of hallowed citizens the kind of Aryans Adolf Hitler dreamed about. In his plan, he wants to uphold the nobility of our lawmakers to distinguish them from the vassals that we, the rest of the Filipinos, presumably are. When the time comes that he succeeds, God forbid, in this egotistical trip, we, the ordinary citizens, may be mandated, under penalty, to bow our heads or perhaps genuflect, each time a royal member of the House of Representatives passes by.
I hold Ilocanos in high regards. My father in law, the late Constancio S. Ladia, led a humble life. Even after having achieved economic success and social prominence, he planted his feet firmly on decent moorings. He only wished to be treated like all other men shorn of any trappings of power and affluence.
Not His Highness, Representative Fariñas, who wants to exempt all honorable members of the House of Representatives from being hailed by lowly traffic enforcers for whatever infraction they commit while allegedly in transit to congress. Stopping or delaying a lawmaker from his travel is impeding into his lordship role of attending to legislative work. This is unacceptable to Fariñas. His highness explains that all a congressman needs to do when confronted for having violated a traffic rule is to show his membership of that assembly of royal people called Congress, and the accosting officer must back off in trembling fear, bow his head in utmost supplication and apologetically let go the traffic violator.
What the congressman opts not to emphasize is that the enforcer, by doing a job not unlike that of a servant, is guilty of some undefined kind of high crime.
We are mindful of the constitutional provision exempting a congressman from arrest for committing an offense punishable by imprisonment not to exceed six years. The veteran Ilocano legislator correctly anchors his argument on the obvious constitutional intent to allow lawmakers to attend to their work without the restraint resulting incarceration. If we may be allowed to add, and on the table of comparison, participating in a legislative discussion is far more important for a representative than his attending a hearing for a minor offense.
Parliamentary immunity, argued the royal blood Fariñas, is the reason for such freedom from arrest. I could, however, feel that his increased vocal fury, during the session, could have been predicated by his inference of a pertinent section in the fundamental law. But, sad to say, he could also have inferred wrongly. The parliamentary immunity that we know of as protecting a legislator from liability is for his utterances during a deliberative assembly not for traffic violations. Or the lawmaker could have juxtaposed his perceptions!
A caveat echoed in the decades-old case of Mutuc versus Morfe by the Supreme Court from established American jurisprudence against establishing a superior class of citizens stares in the eyes of the venerable congressman. The constitution is not meant to create a special kind of privileged people who violates laws and yet incurs no liability.
For in fact, lawmakers, more than anybody else, should, by their swearing allegiance to the constitution, stay focused in following legal strictures. What the highest tribunal direly foretold is what the Ilocano representative hoping to create.
Indeed, I sense that this Ilocano wants to be treated a royalty more than a public servant.
- Latest
