I have long watched Philippine governance, even when I rebelled against the dictatorship of President Bongbong Marcos' father when I was younger. What happened recently in the Senate was just a continuation of our practice of liberal democracy. I won't say the Philippines is a banana republic, but its practice of liberal democracy has been faulty.
The Fall of the Marcos Dictatorship
When the dictatorship of the “original Macoy” fell in 1986, the Filipino people breathed a collective sigh of relief. I thought democracy would finally solve the country’s problems. But that point should be tackled in another column. What I want to point out now is that the previous Marcos dictatorship fell because of international pressure. The same international pressure that ended the impunity that was the war waged against the use of illegal drugs.
Senator Dela Rosa and the ICC
I understand the refusal of Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa to honor the warrant of arrest issued against him by the International Criminal Court or ICC. The court is based in The Hague in the Netherlands, and being held there would be expensive. For all his faults, “Bato” is not known to have enriched himself while in power. Or he would have already been charged for that in Philippine courts.
The Declining Quality of Senators
As for the Senate, there seems to be a dip in the level of senators that the Filipinos are electing lately. So we look back to those times when intellectual capacity and integrity and not popularity determined the kind of senators we sent to the Senate. Showbiz types were rare. I grew up idolizing Jovito Salonga and, before him, Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Tañada. Then there was the late Aquilino Pimentel Jr., a copy of whose speech I kept when he once visited our school.
I wanted to be a writer then, and I collected samples of the writings of the great ones. From them I learned that content or substance determined the beauty of the speech or the composition. That substance is something that I still have to find in the current senators and their president. That is perhaps the reason why we hark back to the days when the Senate became the home of such greats as Recto, Tañada, Jose W. Diokno, Pimentel, and even Miriam Santiago.
Current Senate Makeup
When you have a Senate populated by Dela Rosa, Robin Padilla, etc., you will know how much the quality of that respected institution has dipped. It is not surprising that the said institution has become the laughingstock of outsiders who covered with delight what happened in the Senate recently. I don’t know who coined the Tagalog phrase “Onli in da Pilipins,” but I am tempted to use it now.
The Need for Voter Education
Somebody actually told me that perhaps it is time for deeper voter education. But voter education cannot be separated from the overall state of the country’s educational system. Had our educational system been run well, there wouldn’t have been a need for voter education. Learned voters, after all, vote for learned leaders. That brings us to the bottom line, which is the sad state of our economy. An impoverished nation usually has voters who prefer the popular over the enlightened corps of leaders.
