How to choose good senatorial candidates

Voting for a senator is like selecting from among many job applicants the most competent in terms of work knowledge, skills, attitude, and positive habits. And so, the voters must understand the work of a senator. In HR, the management must have a clear job description, with qualification standards. If the voters only realize what senators are tasked by the Constitution to do, they will stop electing boxers, actors, socialites, and celebrities who haven’t even read the preamble of the Philippine Constitution. They should scout the best and the brightest who have the integrity not to compromise national interest and the pure heart for public service, and to put the common good above personal and partisan interests and ambitions.

Senators are tasked to make laws, legislate, approve national budgets, ratify treaties with other countries, check and balance the powers of the president and the judiciary, be members of the Judicial and Bar Council, as well as confirm through the Commission on Appointments the choices for Cabinet members, ambassadors, consuls, and high military officials. They are also authorized to investigate, not to harass, torture, or persecute, other officials in aid of legislation. Senators are not elected to build highways or waiting sheds. They are elected to make laws and strengthen institutions, not to weaken them and filibuster to appear as heroes at the expense of resource persons.

If voters use their common sense, they should study the works in the Senate and compare the competence of the candidates vis-a-vis the skills needed of a true legislator. If our icons for senators are the likes of Recto (Claro, no other Recto), Tañada, Tolentino (Arturo and no other), Salonga (certainly not Asyong), Manglapus or Tolentino, Diokno, or Laurel, then Filipinos should not elect any aspirant who had been charged with plunder, even if they were acquitted on technical grounds. Filipinos have more than a hundred choices, why elect an ageing one with a pending Sandiganbayan case, who insists on running even if he can hardly walk due to old age? Why elect two brothers who do not even talk to each other, or a daughter of a defeated presidential bet, whose brother and other sister are both running for mayor in the same city?

If we know the work of a senator, why should we elect a singer, a basketball player, a retired general, an action star, or a comedian? Let them excel in their own fields of endeavors. Why allow them to invade unknown territory? If we have too much trouble in the senate that we cannot even pass the national budget, why reelect these senators who have not done anything? To me, the only true legislators in the Senate are Franklin Drilon, a Bar topnotcher; Koko Pimentel, number one in the Bar. I want Angara back in the Senate. They know the law, and how to make laws. Their characters are not too flawed. They have good records, they deserve to be where they are.

But Pia Cayetano is too much. Taguig will have Alan Peter as congressman in one district and his wife Lani as congressman in the other (are they residing in different houses?). And Pia's brother, Lino will be mayor.

We should reject all political dynasties like the Marcoses, the Estradas, and here in Cebu, you know the number one political dynasty; one family running in multiple districts. You know what to do with them.