For my sanity, senators, please don't speak in Filipino

MANILA, Philippines - This week, responding to mounting public pressure, the players in the impeachment trial of Renato Corona began speaking increasingly in Filipino rather than English. To all 23 senator-judges, I ask, please for the love of God, stop this now.

From Tuesday, I have had the privilege of watching the trial unfold from inside the Senate. As a New Zealand reporter who has temporarily joined the PhilSTAR team as an intern, the proceedings have been a steep learning curve. For the past three days I have grappled with your Constitution, your presidential history, legal minutiae, and the names of over 20 politicians and lawyers that I still mispronounce in new and surprising ways.

Senators, for the sake of my sanity, the last thing I need is for the trial to be conducted in another language.

To my horror, many of you are just that. On Tuesday Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile opened the floodgates, forcing me to stare dumbly at my notebook. Miriam Defensor-Santiago was quickly infected. Manuel Villar’s mouth, so severely stricken, flapped almost entirely in Filipino.

Throughout the week, other senators have burst into Filipino in unpredictable moments. I plead with you, senators, have mercy.

You may see an obvious solution to my problem: learn Tagalog. I’ll tell you that I’m trying. But at the moment, senators, your speeches are largely absent the basic greetings and swearwords I know.

As I work to expand my lexicon, I ask, if you can’t speak in English for my sake, think of your 94 million constituents.

You may believe that you’re helping the people by making the trial comprehensible to the layman. But from my experience watching the trial, dear senators, there is no language on Earth that could make this trial comprehensible to the layman.

Right now, in your jolly archipelago, there are Filipinos who do not know what SALN stands for, or why a Supreme Court justice would report his income in an alpha list rather than an income tax return. There are innocent people on these islands who may still live their lives without memorizing all eight Articles of Impeachment or the property transaction history of Cristina Corona. These people, I humbly submit to you, senators, are better for it.

Sometimes a nation’s people — much like children who cry for candy — want things without understanding their full cost. Senators, ask yourselves, could you sleep soundly knowing you’ve subjected your countrymen to the painstaking details of this trial?

Instead, I beseech you to directly assail myself in English. Making sense of this trial is a cruel and unusual punishment that should be reserved for those who have chosen a career in media.

As a reporter who has spent most of his young career watching politics closely, I consider myself’s masochist of the highest order.

So please, senators, next week, as you consider delving again into Tagalog, fight the temptation. Look upon the media section and focus on that tall, bespectacled Caucasian with the furrowed brow.

Have mercy on him. Have mercy on the Filipino people.

(Daniel Simmons-Ritchie is a New Zealand-born reporter who is currently working for a newspaper in Oregon, USA. He is working for the Philippine STAR for a month as an intern through the Asia-New Zealand Foundation.)