Congressmen banking that senators are as greedy

Greed, not greater good, drives congressmen to constitutional revising. Proof is their draft charter, unfurled last week. Only incidental is the shift to federal form that the commission of ex-Chief Justice Reynato Puno and ex-Senate President Aquilino Pimentel espouse. It is made optional, in fact, to the dismay of advocates now explaining it to the people.

What’s firm is the expunging of term limits set in the 1987 Constitution. The House supermajority and the four-factioned minority find common cause to promote self-interest. Shamelessly they push for perpetual rule by their political dynasties. “One to sawa,” they insatiably salivate.

Congressmen see the senators as a hindrance to their vile scheme. So they contrived a rider to melt potential resistance. Put in was a new succession line in which President Rodrigo Duterte, who aims to resign during a transition to federal, would be replaced not by the Vice President but the Senate President. That’s to tempt Senate President Tito Sotto and his majority members into charter change. That’s also to appease the federalists loyal to Duterte that their hated oppositionist Vice President Leni Robredo won’t ever take top place.

The senators and the federalists saw through the ploy, of course. It was too shallow to hide. The rationale is that, since Robredo’s VP victory is being contested, she must be removed from the succession plan. To think that the plan’s author was a former appellate justice, which goes to show that a lawmaker would bend the law just to suit vested interest. The senators and federalists rejected the rider.

The congressmen won’t stop there, for sure. They will resume their abolition of term limits after the May 2019 election. They or their dynastic kin handily would be reelected, aided by automated fraud. They also will campaign hard for senatorial candidates whom they know are as power-mad as them. With three-fourths, or 18 of 24 senators in the bag, they can then amend the Constitution. It will be done, in the winner-take-all politics of the Philippines.

Without term limits, political dynasties will become more entrenched. All the more they would control the economies in their provinces, districts, and cities. Thenceforth, elections will only be guessing games for voters on which members of the dynasties would enslave them for the next four years.

The effect of perpetual dynasties is predictable. They will choose who is to become President from 2022 onwards. The Philippines would follow the decline of Venezuela, ruled by two successive populist strongmen with incompetent cabinets. Venezuelans are reeling under 10,000,000-percent hyperinflation. A cup of coffee that used to cost one bolivar is now 100,000 bolivars. The minimum wage is raised every so often; it is now at three million bolivars a month; a roll of toilet paper sells for 1.6 million bolivars. Everyday by the tens of thousands Venezuelans are fleeing to neighboring Colombia and Brazil in search of food, medicine, and work.

If that happens to archipelagic Philippines, Filipinos would have no neighboring state to run to. They will be boat people.

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“Tara” is the root of the recent disappearance of 23,000 bags of contraband rice in Zamboanga City. They should tell inquiring President Duterte that.

The Customs office there had rejected storage of the smuggled grains that the Coast Guard seized from three vessels in Sept. There supposedly was no space in the Customs compound. In which case, the loot should have been warehoused at the roomier National Food Authority area, pending legal proceedings. But as it turned out, the stock was delivered instead to a private storage, allegedly owned by the very smuggler, named Que. There was no issuance of a requisite warrant of seizure, or an order for the Customs police to guard the private storage. The rice easily was transferred to warehouses of major traders.

Que, Customs insiders whisper, regularly paid “tara” (bribe) of P120 per bag of illegal rice. Half went to a local Customs officer, the other half to a very influential woman at the head office.

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President Duterte reportedly has narrowed down to two his choice as new Customs chief. One is a lawyer at the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission. The other is a retired general, presently an undersecretary.

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