On the path to its own destruction
Those who have watched the ongoing Senate hearings into the allegedly overpriced Makati City parking building would probably have noticed the unique status the Senate subcommittee conducting the hearings have given former Makati vice mayor Ernesto Mercado when compared to other "guests" that have ever appeared in any hearing at the upper chamber.
It appears that Mercado has been given a free hand in the delivery of his testimony, such that he can make side comments without a single senator stopping him for indecorous behavior. As a guest or resource person, Mercado is supposed to limit himself to delivering his testimony or narrative. But he is not supposed to make snide remarks about the subjects of his discourse.
Mercado is free to lay bare whatever goods he has against the Binay family. That is, after all, the purpose of this particular Senate hearing. But it should have been enough for Mercado to just stick to a mere narration of his allegations. To go beyond that and make snide remarks leaves a bad taste in the mouth. That no senator has tried to admonish him for that indicates where the sentiments of the senators lie.
Such unabashed parading of sentiments before the public only serves to further erode what little credibility may be left of the Senate. There is little or no attempt at all at a little subtlety to mask the real intent of the hearings. What exposes may be made to reveal the true person of the vice president can pay for the greater destruction they can bring upon the Senate as an institution.
It may serve some purpose to expose Binay now before the country has committed itself to make him the next president. But whatever gain may be derived from that is too puny to compensate for the loss of the Senate. The country will not rise and fall on whether Binay makes it to the presidency or not. But the country will suffer irreparably from the destruction of the Senate.
For no matter how providential it may seem for Binay to be exposed now, the Senate ought not to be made a party to a patently partisan political action disguised as a legislative function. Legislative functions are supposed to be sacred as they form the essence and spirit of what a legislature is. People may only seem titillated by the juicy morsels of information they get about Binay, but they are not dumb not to see what the real intent is of his destruction.
Maybe this will not be the straw that can break the camel's back. Maybe the Senate can survive the travesty to which it has been unscrupulously put through. But because what is happening to the Senate now, and coming close on the heels of what happened to it not too long ago in connection with the PDAF and the DAP scams, it will no longer take so much to finally destroy it as an institution of public trust.
After all, the precedent has already been set. The path has already been cleared for the use of the Senate as a tool of destruction, regardless of whether the destruction ultimately benefits anyone or anything. The Senate, lest we forget, is a law-making body. Laws are constructive means of a society to achieve that which is good for itself and its members. That is why members of the Senate are called honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Sadly, such have become mere courtesies, and largely demanded or imposed by the senators themselves. The honorifics have become stale and tasteless except for those who cling to them for reassurance of their own self-importance. Outside the august halls of the Senate, however, there is a lot of puking going on, both in the literal and figurative sense.
The free rein extended to Mercado's testimony should have been made to conform to the dictates of taste, if the Senate has indeed lost all sense of propriety. For his attempts at humor cater only to those who find amusement in what is going on. Those of us who are shocked and embarrassed by the prostitution of the Senate find nothing funny in Mercado's verbal calisthenics.
Again, I find everything wrong in the ongoing Senate investigation, at least from the point it spun out from what started as an investigation into alleged overpricing of the Makati City parking building (legitimate up to that point) into an unrestrained and unabashed means to destroy Binay by whatever means. I am not for Binay and I do not care if he is destroyed or not. But please leave the Senate out of it. And don't insult my intelligence that the Senate is not being used as a tool.
Congressional hearings, whether of the Senate or of the House of Representatives, are normally dreadful fates that await anyone called to speak in them. Euphemistically called guests or resource persons, these hapless and unfortunate individuals often end up getting harassed and scolded and threatened with contempt and detention.
In a Senate or House hearing, woe unto you if you say something that does not conform to an already preconceived notion of any or all of the congressional hearing members, which never ceases to make me wonder why people are ever called in the first place when they are not allowed to say anything that the honorable ladies and gentlemen do not like.
Obviously, Mercado is the exception, and I know exactly why. There has never been a single moment when Mercado gets interrupted in his spiel, which is to say everything he says goes straight into the records without so much as a peep of a challenge, a most chilling occurrence indeed. Never in the history of this Senate has one person been accorded so much leeway. Not even the Senate president gets away with so much. The Senate is banging away at the nail to its own coffin.
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