Swell headed vs hardheaded: public suffers Chiz’s temper

People are noticing. Chiz Escudero’s head swelled since becoming Senate President. Latest display was his denigrating the House of Reps as “matitigas ang ulo (hardheaded).”

Before that, Escudero thumped his chest on deposing predecessor Migz Zubiri. He slashed DepEd’s 2025 budget, reportedly due to personal grudge against senator-turned-Secretary Sonny Angara. He removed PhilHealth’s P74-billion subsidy, to the misery of 103 million members and dependents, after getting pissed with its president.

People suffer the consequences of a leader’s rashness. That’s why the Constitution seeks to avert it.

“Live modest lives,” Article XI, Accountability of Public Officers, Section 1 states. In Filipino, “Mamuhay nang buong kapakumbabaan.”

Parliamentary rules also require courtesy. Name-calling is taboo. By tradition, senators and congressmen, presidents and VPs, Cabinet members and justices and all other public officials and employees accord each other respect. Such respect is to the office, the title and the person.

Escudero would do well to emulate the mild manner of Senate Presidents Jovy Salonga, Neptali Gonzales, Nene Pimentel, Tito Sotto. And of his father, the patient, professorial minister of Agriculture and congressman Sonny Escudero.

Escudero’s reason for branding congressmen “hardheaded” was shallow. The Senate Secretariat last June 16 had sent a process server to deliver to the House the entry of appearance of impeached VP Sara Duterte’s defense lawyers. The House Secretariat’s receiving clerk declined to accept the sealed envelope because, contrary to practice, it didn’t state the title of the contained document.

It’s unknown what Escudero’s messenger told him. What’s known is that, losing his cool, he blasted away at a press conference. No attempt to first ask the Senate Secretary, for protocol, to inquire from the House counterpart what happened.

Escudero retaliated by not sending a Senate panel to the bicameral conference on a legislated daily wage increase. The House panel waited in vain. Minimum wage earners lost the chance for P100-P200 hike.

Escudero threatened that, due to what he perceives as House stubbornness, the senator-judges might as well just dismiss the Articles of Impeachment. “A simple majority can do that,” he sneered, ignoring for the nth time the Constitution’s mandate for impeachment trial by the Senate to “forthwith proceed” upon receipt of the Articles.

Escudero received the Articles five months ago, Feb. 5. He contrived excuses to delay trial. He belittled the contrary stance of legal luminaries: three Constitution authors, two ex-Chief Justices, dozens of law school deans and hundreds of constitutional law professors.

Escudero doesn’t bother to conceal his conceit. In refusing to start hearings, he repeatedly alibis that the House should not rush the Senate. Yet it’s not the House, but the Constitution ratified by the people, which requires “forthwith proceed.”

PNA file photo

He even imposed on the House one demeaning and one impossible condition for him to move:

First, he ordered the House as his supposedly “subordinate body” to certify that the Articles of Impeachment didn’t break the Constitution’s rule on entertaining only one impeachment complaint per official per year.

The House meekly complied, if only to ensure that trial can commence. It did not raise any more the Senate’s need to presume regularity of the House’s actions, as parliamentary rules state.

Second, Escudero required the 19th House to ensure that the 20th one will continue to prosecute Sara’s impeachment.

Here, the House hesitated and sought Senate clarification. How on earth can an outgoing Congress commit the next one, which has yet to convene on July 28, to any action?

Escudero deems this basic House query “hardheadedness.”

Asked what he thought of Escudero’s unusual impositions, four-term Senator Ping Lacson said, “Three reasons, three letters: E-G-O.”

Outright dismissal would make the Senate “a laughingstock.” Lacson cautioned: “The judge up there pounds the gavel, says ‘I move to dismiss,’ pounds the gavel again, then declares ‘This case is dismissed.’ Isn’t it awkward?

“We should follow the Constitution, plain and simple. Let the House prosecutors present evidence. They haven’t even presented any yet, so what’s the basis of dismissal?”

Former SP Koko Pimentel, a Bar exam topnotch, foresees the prosecutors complaining to the Supreme Court: “They will most likely win, so it would be a slap on the Senate’s face to be lectured by the Supreme Court that it has no choice but to conduct the trial.”

Senators will go down in infamy if Escudero fulfills his threat.

Escudero recently appointed a spokesman for the Senate impeachment court. Senator-judges murmur that “he’s only Chiz’s spokesman, not the court’s, because he never consults us.”

Escudero never caucuses to gather consensus. Only twice did he consult senators one by one, in May 2024 to be made SP, and again this week to secure that post in the 20th Congress.

Longest serving, five-term Senator Sotto recounted how Senate President Gonzales started the tradition of weekly caucuses: “It sped up the work of the plenary, and avoided recriminations.”

Last June 10, Senators Robin Padilla and Joel Villanueva nearly came to blows when they misunderstood each other’s intent, although both are pro-Sara.

SP Nene Pimentel also held weekly caucuses, Sotto says. In one of those, ex-judge-senator Miriam Defensor Santiago coached colleagues on how to ask penetrating questions, evaluate witnesses and weigh evidence for the trial of President Joseph Estrada. “She insisted that we wear judicial robes to emphasize our authority and oath of fairness.”

Escudero might need to re-undergo a crash course on parliamentary decorum at the Development Academy of the Philippines.

As a retired general posted online: “He has a broken personal life.”