Change in House leadership does not interest most people

At the peak of the move to unseat former Speaker Jose de Venecia as Speaker of the House of Representatives, a tv station asked its watchers who they think was better, the incumbent or the one groomed to take his place? The answer: Pareho ra na sila, pulos trapo.

This response speaks loudly of the low regard people have on the lower house of Congress as represented by its top leadership. Like the Senate, the House has been perceived as a gathering of congenital politicians whose agenda gravitate mainly on how to keep themselves in power and in the process fatten their bankbooks. If you think this is a gratuitous statement try looking into these gentlemen’s assets and you will see what we mean. You will see that those rows of sartorially groomed gentlemen are actually millionaires’ rows. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being millionaires, of course. The bothersome thing is that most of them became so while serving their term as members of the House. How did they do it? Only the most naïve don’t know.

To be sure, there are some trustworthy and clean-living personalities in that body. But there are only a few of these apparently misplaced people hobnobbing with their differently motivated colleagues. Their voices are voices in the wilderness drowned oftentimes by the cacophony of horse-trading therein.

House-trading seems to characterize the way our congressmen do their thing. When a proposed law is scrutinized, the immediate concern seems to be, what can I get out of it? It’s seldom the interest of the people or the country which figures in the scrutiny. Thus, even if a bill is a good one because of its expectedly positive impacts, its passage is seldom a certainty. Always there are oppositions, especially from those whose “clients” would be adversely affected.

This happened to the DepEd payroll decentralization bill of former Congressman Jose R. Gullas. By dispersing the processing and printing of teachers’ salary checks to regional capitals, efficiency is assured. Errors are minimized and corrections (if any) are easily effected without the need for teachers to go to Manila for follow-up. Yet, this bill met some detractors in both legislative houses, especially in the Senate which played deaf and dumb to the teachers’ pleas for help.

This is also happening to the cheap medicine bill which until now has been left un-enacted in the House because some congressmen, perhaps to protect their clients’ interest, are trying hard to delay its passage. There are talks of a multimillion lobby from multi-national companies whose huge takes from overprized medicine could be affected once the bill is approved. True or not, the perception is that some congressmen could have been mesmerized by such lobby, which explains why the hill is still a bill at present. How many lives would have been saved if medicine is made affordable to low-income folks? But saving lives seems not to be the concern of the congressmen.

De Venecia or Nograles or anyone else as headman of the House won’t make any difference to the lives of the rank and file. There will be the same political maneuvers, the same mutual back-scratching all in the name of happy fellowship and collegial advantage.

Towards Malacañang, the same trend is likely to prevail. For who is the new Speaker but the chosen messiah of the Pasig Office? Like JDV in the days of old, the Davao solon will be dancing with his fellow sycophants to the music of that Office, a sad spectacle really because it makes a mockery of the principle of co-equality among the three branches of the government.

But more than rubbing against a basic democratic concept, the House’s subservience to the Executive Office will throttle its initiatives in the area of check and balances. Measures perceived as disadvantageous to either or both but beneficial to the country as a whole could be tamp down while those that give them more power and political leverage could be championed and adopted.

The thesis here is not for an opposition legislature, much less for a bull-headed kind like that exemplified by the Senate. It is for a dynamic apolitical body deeply obsessed with the job of making the life of the average Filipino better. It is for a gathering of selfless and self-respecting men and women driven by the desire to make their country a better place to live in.

In the past the Philippine Congress was a highly respected body bejeweled by highly respectable lawmakers. But now….

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