Shameless flaunting of insensitivity

I could not go along with the proposal of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago that there should be a prescribed uniform for all members of the Senate and the House of Representatives attending any and all future State of the Nation Addresses of the president.

I do not think matters of dress at a special event like the State of the Nation Address of a president should be made a subject of regulation. Besides, I do not think our lawmakers would take kindly the idea of looking like their counterparts in the National People's Congress of China.

But I do share the reason why Santiago would dare rock the boat with her proposal. I too felt sick in the stomach watching the honorable ladies of Congress parading themselves in their finest and most expensive gowns as if the SONA was the legislative version of the Oscars red carpet event.

I can understand the need to dress formally for the event. But the need to dress formally should not be a license to ostentatious display of privilege. It is the height of wanton insensitivity for representatives of the people to be so vulgarly different from the people they represent.

Have our lawmakers lost all sense of propriety, that while they try to outdo one another in sartorial elegance and expense in the great hall of Congress, the very people for whom they claim to represent cannot even get inside for lack of "jewels" to be considered a guest worthy of a seat?

Pictures of a policeman crying uncontrollably outside Congress during the SONA have gone viral on the Internet. The policeman cried after the watershed of his emotions broke on being prodded by prostesters as to why he was "turning against the people."

The leftists protesting outside Congress of course misappropriated the name of the people. The people are not troublemakers spoiling for a fight. The people were at home or at work. They were in school. They were anywhere but the barricades.

But for lack of anyone to stand up and be heard on behalf of the people, even the leftists are worth considering in such a situation, in fact far better than the ones inside Congress who, judging by their merry demeanor and heavy finery, were completely oblivious to the presence of their "bosses" outside.

The mass of glitter inside did not know that a policeman outside was crying because he, along with hundreds of other policemen, was risking his life battling the "people" to protect their representatives who did not know, and could not care less if they did, that a riot was going on outside.

 The policeman was choking on his guilt and aching from the pangs of his misery. There he was, hungry and alternately drenched from the rain and then baked in the sun, trying to protect those inside who did not even know he was there to keep them safe.

The policeman was crying from the realization that if he died there on the street, all the gowns and jewels flaunted on the day of the president's report to the people could not bring him back to life. And the family he would leave behind can never recover from the loss even with the condolences of all lawmakers.

In other words, all the pomp and glitter are the exact opposite of the real drama happening outside Congress, the real story that can never weave its way into the words of the president's speech. How ironic for the president, the weight of the nation on his shoulders, to stand there surrounded by excess.

But then again, even the president's sisters were arrayed similarly. And though they are not lawmakers or anyway connected with government, still it would have mattered if they dressed with a little restraint, in keeping with the real and undeniable agony just outside the veneer of their influence.

What a sad commentary about our country that while many people cannot even buy a decent shirt, their representatives can flaunt their expensive tastes with nary a qualm nor quiver of conscience. What a great national shame.