A new division has emerged in the Senate, which is complicating alliances and the leadership change that’s in the works.
On one side are the senators facing accusations (some already formally filed, others still coming up) of high crimes – offenses that involve abuse of power, betrayal of public trust, misuse of public funds and obstruction of justice.
On the other side are those without such baggage, who see so many things in this country that can bring them to tears besides not getting a kumusta from colleagues during a badly scripted soap opera.
Many have put out their lists of the senators on one side. As we all know, one is on the run from an arrest warrant for multiple murder as a crime against humanity, with a second one likely to face a similar arrest order.
Two are expected to be arrested and held without bail for corruption-related cases in connection with budget and flood control anomalies. Two others are expected to face similar indictments for bribery, corruption and charges related to campaign contributions. One of them reportedly volunteered to become the Senate president. Alan Peter, look at the loyalties in your camp.
Two are accused of market manipulation. Another, a notorious political butterfly, has spawned a caterpillar accused of being the equivalent of a scalper of energy franchises. Still another belongs to the original family of kleptocrats.
Two Duterte diehard supporters could face charges for obstruction of justice – an offense that carries the penalty of perpetual disqualification from public office.
And then there’s the Drama Queen of B-movies, who has doubled down on her right to break down at the Senate because her colleagues didn’t check up on her while her brother’s chief bodyguard was shooting up the chamber. (Over 30 gun discharges, rapid-fired as “warning shots”? Do you take us all for idiots?)
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Before all these disgraceful developments came up, the nation was already saddled with a 24-member chamber that features four sets of siblings, plus the still unresolved flood control and budget corruption mess.
This week, Sherwin Gatchalian is expected to take over as the “compromise” Senate president – reportedly accepted by both the majority and the minority.
As far as we can glean from the Marites grapevine, the main thing holding up the leadership change is the discussion on who among those who have expressed readiness to jump ship may constitute the lesser evil. (OK, it’s still evil. How about calling them the next best alternative?)
Accepting the next best into the other camp could be seen by certain quarters as a sellout, a betrayal of core principles or values. As Sen. Panfilo Lacson put it, the integrity, dignity and reputation of the Senate must be preserved.
On the other hand, realpolitik can require pragmatic considerations to prevent gridlocks in governance. It’s an imperfect world, and you can’t always get what you want. As former German chancellor Otto von Bismarck famously put it, politics is “the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.”
Considering the nature of the problems plaguing the Senate, “the lesser evil” is still the more accurate description.
Still, politics is the art of compromise. The reality in the 24-member Senate is that leadership changes are dependent on getting the numbers. The current minority senators will have to compromise and welcome into their fold the lesser evils from the other side.
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Even with Sen. Ronald dela Rosa unlikely to pop up again to be used in his allies’ personal power plays, we’re told that the majority vote needed for a leadership change will still be based on 24, the number of Senate seats.
The usual suspects who have elevated skirting the law to an art are moving to allow members to vote by Zoom. If this is allowed, we could soon see the spectacle of all the DDS senators pretending to work while jet-setting at taxpayers’ expense in Europe for weeks on end or, like the Vice President, spending most of the time in the Netherlands, ostensibly to visit Rodrigo Duterte in The Hague.
And we are paying these lowlifes millions of pesos a month in salaries, maintenance and other operating expenses.
While this question is being debated, people are wondering if the Senate will ever discipline Dela Rosa, if only for chronic absenteeism with full pay.
The House of Representatives has suspended, censured and even expelled members for lesser offenses, even without final conviction. Arnolfo Teves, while trying to obtain asylum in Timor-Leste to avoid arrest in the Philippines for multiple murder, was expelled from the 19th Congress merely for “disorderly behavior.”
Maybe it’s easier to lose one lawmaker in a chamber with 318 members.
We don’t know if senators can muster the political will to expel Dela Rosa, who is wasting millions of pesos a month in public funds to maintain his Senate office packed with his relatives. He himself continues to collect P300,000 a month in basic pay for doing nothing but flee from the law, plus a police retirement monthly pension of about P300,000.
Failing to even censure Dela Rosa reinforces perceptions of the Senate as an old boys’ club, a bastion of impunity in the abuse of power.
This is the bunch that the so-called Solid Bloc-11 must contend with for a leadership change. SB-11 is cute and catchy, but the minority bloc still lacks the numbers. To become the majority, the 11 will have to settle for the next best.