How to choose the best senators and representatives

Today, the nineteenth of August, is exactly the 143rd birth anniversary of one of the best Philippine presidents, and first senate president, Manuel L Quezon. Born in 1878, when we were still under Spain, he was elected senator in 1916, under the Americans, and was elected senate president that same year. He occupied that post until 1935 to become the country's first Commonwealth president. He is the best model as an outstanding senator, as Don Sergio Osmena's Sr, Quezon's best friend forever, is the icon of how to become the best congressman and Speaker of the House.

During their times, one cannot become a congressman if he or she is not a distinguished lawyer, or a master of laws because to be a senator or congressman is to make laws. It was the golden era of Philippine politics when members of the Senate and the House were truly honorable. Those were the times when you could not win senatorial elections by dancing the budot or singing Usahay, nor by merely becoming an action movie actor playing Asyong Salonga, Nardong Putik or Leon Guerrero. You should be learned and must have been a famous law practitioner like Claro M Recto and Lorenzo Tanada, an orator like Raul Manglapus and Emmanuel Pelaez, a bar topnotcher like Jovito salonga or Jose W Diokno, an author like Arturo Tolentino and Camilo Osias.

To be a senator, if we are really serious in choosing our legislators, a candidate must have demonstrated competence on the following areas of government and legislations: foreign affairs and international law, finance and the national economy, national defense and national security, governance and public administration, parliamentary order and the workings of the bureaucracy. He or she must know the dynamics between supply and demand, trade and commerce, agriculture, public works, communication and transportation, science and technology, public health and public education and social welfare. He must know the dynamics between employment and wages, as well as the phenomenon of labor outward migration.

If you think that Willy Revillame, Raffy Tulfo, Vilma Santos and Lucy Torres Gomez know all these disciplines then, go ahead elect them in 2022 to join Manny Pacquiao, Lito Lapid, Bong Revilla and JV Ejercito, Jinggoy Estrada, and all the comedians and jokers to spice up the debates in the Senate. There was a time when Alma Moreno ran for the senate and she almost cried because of the very difficult questions propounded by Karen Davila over national television. If Ramon Revilla, Sr could make it and even made Bong inherit his post, if he could make Sonny Jaworski, Revilla's son-in-law join Freddie Webb, then every Tomas, Dikoy or Harry Roque can make it there.

If we have unworthy public officials, they were elected by unworthy, if not silly (I did not say ''stupid'') electorate. The quality or lack of it of our senators and congressmen are reflections of what kind of people we are. We deserve the mediocres (I did not say idiots, morons, or nincompoops), we put in Congress because we persist in sending clowns to the gallery once occupied by the illustrious venerables like Quezon, Recto, Diokno and Tanada. Now, Jojo Binay wants to join Nancy. At least Jojo is a lawyer and a UP graduate at that. If he loses to Tulfo, or Revillame, then I have good reason to immigrate to Timbuktu.