Insenaty

Yes, you read that right – it’s not a misspelling, just a new word I coined to describe the recent goings-on in the Philippine Senate, with the 13-person majority refusing to show up for work for the second straight day as of this writing. Anyone watching this charade from a foreign perspective – someone without any knowledge of or interest in Philippine politics, like the proverbial Martian – would scratch his/her/its head at this latest turn of events that began with Alan Peter Cayetano and his gang hijacking the Senate leadership on May 11 with the obvious intention of thwarting the impeachment of VP Sara Duterte and saving their own hides. (Update: Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian just got elected Senate President pro tempore on the third day of the majority “boycott,” after Sen. Chiz Escudero showed up and enabled a quorum to resume business. It’s entirely possible that by the time this piece comes out, the “majority” and “minority” I refer to here will have been reversed.)

I had been hoping to move on to another, less inflammatory topic, as much for my relief as yours, but Philippine politics is the gift (at least to opinion writers) that keeps on giving. It’s a sign of the times that my wife Beng – normally a quiet and placid spirit in whom the finest virtues of Buddhist kindness and Christian charity converge – has been spouting forth colorful expletives this past week, even marching to the Senate floor to hold up placards with the likes of dean Winnie Monsod to demand service with integrity from our senators. That was the first day the majority decided (without telling anyone else) to do a no-show, leaving Beng even more infuriated at the thought of these people being paid P300,000 a month (or P10,000 for that day) on top of multiple perks to do – well, nothing, while impoverished seniors die of exhaustion at the ayuda line.

Indeed not a day goes by without some new cause for aggravation, some insistent reminder of how warped our values have become that many Filipinos can no longer tell right from wrong, and good from bad. Glaring examples are DDS memes equating Sen. Jinggoy Estrada – booked for plunder involving P573 million in kickbacks – with the late senator Ninoy Aquino, jailed under martial law for subversion. “We Are All Jinggoy!” proclaims one meme, echoing what we said for Ninoy, “Hindi Ka Nag-Iisa.”

For his part, the Senate majority’s resident antidote to wisdom, Robin Padilla, opines that the cases of Leila de Lima and Bato de la Rosa were different, because the former was linked to drugs and the latter to their extermination, conveniently forgetting the charges laid out against Bato by the International Criminal Court. In the latest episode of “The World According to DDS,” Senate President and Duterte runningmate Alan Peter Cayetano characterizes his patron’s murderous tokhang “war on drugs” as “pro-life.” Duterte stalwart Rodante Marcoleta promises a blockbuster of a hearing by their bogus Blue Ribbon committee featuring game-changing revelations by 18 “ex-Marines” who then make claims so preposterous that they should each be meted out 5,000 push-ups for poor storytelling. (They can always take it out on their sponsor, who put them up to it.)

That’s how topsy-turvy things have become in our society, of which our senators and their behavior are but representative. They come in tailored suits and ties, in barongs and native dress, in heavy make-up and botox for the cameras, but at their best and sadly also their worst they are not much different from the rest of us who put them there in the first place.

We’re not asking for or even dreaming about a happily unified Senate here, which is both impossible and frankly a danger to democracy. We just want a working and serving one, governed by reason, civility and the law. If integrity, intelligence and performance are too much to ask for, can they at least keep quiet, take their paychecks and emoluments and pose for the media, but otherwise let their colleagues do their job?

Over the next couple of weeks until the impeachment trial begins on July 6, we expect the Senate to come to its senses and to set itself aright, very likely with a new majority formally elected by at least 13 members, to put it beyond all dispute. That will be a relief for a people who may initially have found some entertainment value in the Senate show, but are losing their patience with a dysfunctional institution their taxes are fattening, without getting much in return.

And let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that our problems will vanish with the installation of a new and more reasonable Senate majority, and not even with the impeachment of VP Sara. That’s the big mistake we made at EDSA; in our euphoria, we forgot that changes in leadership are far easier to pull off and to manage than changes in society and in the people themselves. We’ll be happy if and when the level-headed Sen. Sotto wrests back the Senate presidency or the apparent compromise candidate, Sen. Gatchalian, so the old Blue Ribbon committee can pick up where it left off and resume its hearings on corruption in government, which has been bleeding us dry and which, come to think of it, has been at the root of all this drama.

I earlier said that in its division and divisiveness, the Senate is really us. Those rifts are real, and maybe they can’t be helped. But for what we’re paying them, we can demand of our senators that they not only represent us but be better than us, and show a better and working model of a functioning if divided democracy. Bring sanity back to the Senate, and maybe then we’ll survive.

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Email me at [email protected] and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.