From statesmen to scoundrels

There was a time – which now seems to be not one but many lifetimes ago – when wise men filled the Senate of the Philippines.

It was a time when listening to our senators became a stimulating and intellectual exercise. One learned from the debates and arguments among towering figures, leaving the gallery with bits of wisdom and points to ponder.

As a rookie economic journalist decades ago, I would go to the Senate a few times and, as far as it was from my hood, I looked forward to covering sessions and committee hearings when I had to, for instance when they debated the national budget or other economic legislation.

I remember listening to the likes of senators Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Raul Roco, Sergio Osmeña III, Teofisto Guingona Jr., Franklin Drilon and Juan Ponce Enrile.

They came from different sides of the political spectrum, but they defended their politics with a nobility of sorts – enough intellect, a sense of honor and decency.

But what do we have now? We have senators storming into the Senate session hall to lash out at colleagues or Senate employees. We have a senator running frantically and stumbling like in a cartoon series. We have a Senate president making an outburst in front of the press to defend not our country but one man.

The early 2000s may be one of the last periods when the chamber still had a strong mix of seasoned debaters and intellectual heavyweights.

Back then, and long before, the men and women of the Senate were still worthy to be called senators – Claro Recto, Lorenzo Tañada, Jovito Salonga, Ninoy Aquino and others.

The word itself bears the sheer weight of the role. Senate, derived from the Latin noun Senatus, translates to “council of elders.” It originates from senex, which means “old man” or “elder,” referring to a governing body composed of mature, experienced members.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson had to remind his colleagues of that, as well as the Senate’s long, glorious history.

He had reasons to be disgusted, as were many of us.

I sent a message to former senator Serge Osmeña, asking how he feels that the chamber he once occupied has been desecrated.

“It’s disappointing,” he lamented.

A longtime Senate veteran also called me because he could not hide his disgust and contempt at what happened in the chamber.

The legends of the Senate, now long gone, must be turning in their graves, he said.

Last week’s national disgrace reminded him of a quote he heard back in the day during a debate between two senators. It went something like, “It’s easy to get elected as a senator, but it’s hard to be one.”

Some of our current crop of senators certainly prove this true every day – that winning is easier than living up to the intellectual and moral demands of being a true senator.

Performative politics

The late 2010s saw the Senate begin to spiral downward as social media boomed and disinformation spread. It made elections a popularity and personality contest.

Enter 2022 and we have Robin Padilla, a popular actor and ex-convict who was eventually pardoned, finding his way into the Senate halls.

The result is performative politics at best – dizzying and cringeworthy. But he must truly be enjoying it, landing in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Remember how he was caught combing his moustache during a committee hearing? Or how his wife flaunted on Instagram a photo of herself receiving a glutathione or skin-whitening intravenous drip in her husband’s office? Remember too that a member of his staff was implicated in the Senate sergeant-at-arms report regarding the smell of marijuana that emanated from the ladies’ room in the Senate?

And now, the biggest news he has made as a senator is that he helped Senator Bato dela Rosa, chief implementer of Rody Duterte’s bloody drug war, escape.

What a hero he must be feeling. Just like in the movies.

Impunity takes hold

But that’s not the worst thing about the Senate of today.

It’s the reality that impunity has reached an institution that is supposed to be respectable and respected. It’s the kind of impunity that existed since Rody Duterte launched the bloody, violent drug war or the kind of impunity that also pervades in the Marcos administration as seen in flood control corruption cases.

This impunity exists among those in power, that feeling of entitlement that they can and must get away with anything – from the murder of tens of thousands of drug suspects to maletas upon maletas of stolen money.

We saw that on Monday at the Senate when Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano led a coup ahead of the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara and on Wednesday when the newly appointed Senate sergeant-at-arms, Maj. Gen. Mao Aplasca (Dela Rosa’s fellow Davaoeño and PMA classmate) pulled the trigger, claiming that the Senate was under attack.

Senate under siege

Last week’s coup and shooting incident at the Senate has sunk the once esteemed institution into a new low, deeper into the depths of despair.

The result is a chamber that has crumbled because of self-preservation and very dirty politics.

So yes, in a sense, the Senate is under siege, attacked by a crop of senators who are nothing like statesmen but scoundrels behaving like bullies, goons and trapos.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on X @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.