Creeping despotism
SO many months back, Malacañang flung the gauntlet that was EO 464 at the Senate, in abject contempt of the latter’s co-equal status in a republican state.
In as many months, EO 464 proved so potent an incantation to just about every government functionary called to the Senate that it rendered the senators uncharacteristically speechless, or meekly resigned to canceling public hearings. Apparently emboldened by the senators’ seeming sheepishness, Cabinet members and their factotums openly snub even the all-important yet routine hearings on their departments’ proposed 2006 budgets.
But for some calculated soundbytes and perfunctory printed noises from two or three senators – search me for the twenty one others – there was nothing of substance that immediately came out of the Senate.
Not a few citizens have gone to calling the Senate as a body of wimps. And hark back to the times of Recto, Tañada, and Diokno.
Towering intellectuals and nationalists all, theirs was the Senate that actualized the noblest elements of the national life, articulated the intellect of the nation, wielded the power of reason against the force of numbers, affirmed the “sanctity of right against the brutality of might”, preserved, protected and promoted the ethos of the Filipino.
Ours is a Senate of…oh, God, what grievous sin have we committed to deserve this punishment? Reductio ad absurdum no matter, the Senate – Drilon, Villar, Gordon, Pimentel, and the Joker as saving grace – still holds some promises. Ain’t hope spring eternal in the heart of the Wowoweed Filipino?
Gladness came to the heart with the news over the weekend that 17 senators have asked the Supreme Court for a temporary restraining order on EO 464. There’s still hope, indeed, Mang Juan.
With a House of Representatives cleaved, cowed and co-opted – some in the Opposition would deign corrupted – by the executive branch, the Senate – its infirmities notwithstanding – is called upon by the nation, if not by Providence, to rise above the vulgar plane of party politics and fulfill its primordial role in a republic: To “curb the propensity of a single numerous assembly to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions,” as The American Commonwealth plainly and so precisely enunciated.
EO 464 aside, the “impulse of sudden and violent passions” blew up too in the railroaded impeachment of Macapagal-Arroyo, the “Hello Garci” hearings, the fertilizer scam, the jueteng hearings, the Venable affair, etcetera. And lest we forget, the Gestapo-inspired calibrated pre-emptive response.
Passions the administration so arrogantly tried to contain with its rule of law and majesty of numbers in a House that caninely pandered to every wish of its mistress, salivating at the prospect of pork from her table.
House members filling the Cabinet – Andaya, Nachura and Puno, among the latest – comes to me though less as a payback for their solid support of the embattled Macapagal-Arroyo at the time of the impeachment than a call to a more important – to Malacañang, that is – mission: Charter Change.
With Puno recycled at DILG, expect the local government units to be reduced to a Cha-Cha chanting chorus. So they will, with utmost certainty, claim they hold the majority of the national constituency. Theirs though would be that majority described by Goethe as “…a few strong men who lead, some knaves who temporize and the weak multitude who follow, without the faintest idea of what they want.”
Millions of signatures from the yoked and herded masa , resolutions from all fawning LGUs, NGO collaborators and vested interest groups are set to be heaped upon the nation to tells us “what the Filipino people want.”
So we want to change our Constitution? So we want a parliamentary form of government? Spare us, Joe De V.
George Washington, for all his intellectual inferiority to Jefferson and Adams, did one over his first two successors. Finding resonance and relevance today in the Philippines is a passage from his farewell address: “The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.”
(Pampanga News, Feb. 16-22, 2006)
In as many months, EO 464 proved so potent an incantation to just about every government functionary called to the Senate that it rendered the senators uncharacteristically speechless, or meekly resigned to canceling public hearings. Apparently emboldened by the senators’ seeming sheepishness, Cabinet members and their factotums openly snub even the all-important yet routine hearings on their departments’ proposed 2006 budgets.
But for some calculated soundbytes and perfunctory printed noises from two or three senators – search me for the twenty one others – there was nothing of substance that immediately came out of the Senate.
Not a few citizens have gone to calling the Senate as a body of wimps. And hark back to the times of Recto, Tañada, and Diokno.
Towering intellectuals and nationalists all, theirs was the Senate that actualized the noblest elements of the national life, articulated the intellect of the nation, wielded the power of reason against the force of numbers, affirmed the “sanctity of right against the brutality of might”, preserved, protected and promoted the ethos of the Filipino.
Ours is a Senate of…oh, God, what grievous sin have we committed to deserve this punishment? Reductio ad absurdum no matter, the Senate – Drilon, Villar, Gordon, Pimentel, and the Joker as saving grace – still holds some promises. Ain’t hope spring eternal in the heart of the Wowoweed Filipino?
Gladness came to the heart with the news over the weekend that 17 senators have asked the Supreme Court for a temporary restraining order on EO 464. There’s still hope, indeed, Mang Juan.
With a House of Representatives cleaved, cowed and co-opted – some in the Opposition would deign corrupted – by the executive branch, the Senate – its infirmities notwithstanding – is called upon by the nation, if not by Providence, to rise above the vulgar plane of party politics and fulfill its primordial role in a republic: To “curb the propensity of a single numerous assembly to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions,” as The American Commonwealth plainly and so precisely enunciated.
EO 464 aside, the “impulse of sudden and violent passions” blew up too in the railroaded impeachment of Macapagal-Arroyo, the “Hello Garci” hearings, the fertilizer scam, the jueteng hearings, the Venable affair, etcetera. And lest we forget, the Gestapo-inspired calibrated pre-emptive response.
Passions the administration so arrogantly tried to contain with its rule of law and majesty of numbers in a House that caninely pandered to every wish of its mistress, salivating at the prospect of pork from her table.
House members filling the Cabinet – Andaya, Nachura and Puno, among the latest – comes to me though less as a payback for their solid support of the embattled Macapagal-Arroyo at the time of the impeachment than a call to a more important – to Malacañang, that is – mission: Charter Change.
With Puno recycled at DILG, expect the local government units to be reduced to a Cha-Cha chanting chorus. So they will, with utmost certainty, claim they hold the majority of the national constituency. Theirs though would be that majority described by Goethe as “…a few strong men who lead, some knaves who temporize and the weak multitude who follow, without the faintest idea of what they want.”
Millions of signatures from the yoked and herded masa , resolutions from all fawning LGUs, NGO collaborators and vested interest groups are set to be heaped upon the nation to tells us “what the Filipino people want.”
So we want to change our Constitution? So we want a parliamentary form of government? Spare us, Joe De V.
George Washington, for all his intellectual inferiority to Jefferson and Adams, did one over his first two successors. Finding resonance and relevance today in the Philippines is a passage from his farewell address: “The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.”
(Pampanga News, Feb. 16-22, 2006)
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 9:22 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home