EDITORIAL – Tax money should not be used to destroy the country

Those who are advocating constitutional changes may as well start considering whether the so-called party-list system of electing sectoral representatives to the House of Representatives has worked according to its original intentions. If not, then bettter scrap the system.

The view to an increasing number of people is that the party-list system has been misused and improperly implemented. There are, for example, many representatives who may have run and won under different party-list organizations but who are very difficult to tell apart.

That is because they are all pursuing the same agenda, which is the ultimate overthrow of government. Their rhetoric and antics give away the same idelogical background they share, and it is stupid for this government to continue accommodating those who seek its demise.

Giving the marginalized sectors a voice by means of representation in Congress had been a wonderful idea, at least on paper. But those who eventually got elected to represent them do not truly represent them. They represent a political ideology instead.

The marginalized sectors were merely taken for a ride and used as springboards for the launching of political initiatives that have nothing to do with uplifting lives. Indeed, the trouble these initiatives are causing only makes lives more miserable, especially the poor.

Of course these so-called champions of the poor are very good in exploiting the misery of the hungry, soothing their hunger with gestures of sympathy that heartens emotionally but do not really provide better opportunities for livelihood.

Go check their records in the national legislature and you will find that almost from the entire time that they got elected, they have spent more time getting embroiled in a plot to oust the president than thinking of ways to alleviate the plight of those they represent.

To be sure, there may be a few party-list representations that are truly serving out their mandate, and the marginalized sectors they represent can call themselves truly lucky that this is so.

But for the most part, the other party-list organizations are so amorphous there is really no telling them apart. It is, in fact, a wonder why they were recognized singly when they could just have been lumped together.

Unfortunately, the government at the time felt the best way to hush these troublemakers was to bring them on board. Well, now that they are on board, the mayhem is in the house. Maybe it is time to kick them out again. Tax money should not be used to destroy the country.