While browsing the internet over the weekend, I chanced upon an old clip of Karen Davila’s interview of the late senator Jovito Salonga. He spoke about how and why senators during the old days were revered.
“May mga katangian ang mga senador noon na bihirang makita ngayon. One is that they were incorruptible. Hindi pwedeng ma-corrupt because they have what I call excellent character and moral integrity,” he said. (The senators then had qualities that are hard to find now. … They could not be corrupted …)
“No. 2,” he continued, “they were full-time senators. Walang sideline ‘yan. Talagang buong-buo ang pagbibigay nila ng kanilang sarili sa publiko, sa paglilingkod sa bayan.” (They had no sidelines. They gave their all to the public, to public service.)
Salonga, a victim of martial law, was president of the Senate from 1987 to 1992. He also served as senator from 1965 until Ferdinand Marcos Sr. padlocked Congress in 1972. So, he was in a position to compare the pre- and post-martial law legislature.
If I’m not mistaken, the interview was done in 2007, nine years before Salonga passed on in 2016. That time, roughly 18 years ago, Salonga said the quality of senators had deteriorated a bit. The Senate still had the likes of Joker Arroyo, Franklin Drilon and Raul Roco. Some of the incumbents now were neophytes in the Senate at the time, such as Chiz Escudero, Alan Peter Cayetano, Migz Zubiri, who have completed three terms in the House.
If he were still around, I wonder what he would say with the likes of Robinhood Padilla, who repeatedly said during last week’s session that he is not a lawyer and proudly declared that he was more often an accused and was even a convicted felon. How would he describe the Senate with the likes of Ronald Dela Rosa and Bong Go, who have openly declared their adulation for their political patron, former president Rodrigo Duterte?
In the interview, Salonga underscored that voters have to mature and be able to choose leaders who are truly capable of serving the public.
During the glory days of the Senate, he said, there was “tagisan ng talino” (intellectual competition) among the senators, among them, Jose Diokno, Claro M. Recto, Lorenzo Tanada and Vicente Paterno.
Indeed, gone are the days when the public could learn from the substantive debates of esteemed legislators.
Nowadays, we see a senator combing his mustache while attending a Senate hearing, and another one kneeling before police officers and begging them to tell the truth during a legislative inquiry.
In 2023, Drilon criticized the lack of decorum in the current Senate. Recently, writer and historian Manolo Quezon posted on X that he is “not so old that [he doesn’t] remember when Senate presidents had a sense of decorum and had enough self-discipline not to roll up their sleeves, get up and slouch at the back in the midst of presiding, or snack at the rostrum and then speak with their mouths full.”
In the regular Senate sessions and during the initial session of the impeachment court last week, we saw not only a lack of decorum among the legislators but, worse, a mockery of the impeachment proceedings.
After a lengthy debate on what to do with the impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte, the senators finally acceded to convene as an impeachment court and take an oath that “in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws of the Philippines.”
While we leave the discussion on the legal complexities of the case to the experts, we can’t avoid noticing the apparent ethical lapses and lack of social graces of some senators after they had donned the Oxford crimson robe as senator-judges for Duterte’s impeachment trial.
Padilla may again invoke that nothing in the impeachment rules says he could not join the vice president in Kuala Lumpur and volunteer to be her campaign manager in 2028. Perhaps, Sen. Imee Marcos could say the same as she giggles over Padilla’s endorsement of her as a potential vice presidential running mate for Duterte.
Barely two days after taking their oath as senator-judges, Padilla and Marcos joined Duterte on a trip to Malaysia for an Independence Day celebration on June 12. Marcos rallied the audience to “stand behind” the vice president.
A few days before that, Padilla told reporters, while explaining that the impeachment case against the vice president should be dismissed even before the impeachment court convened: “Kami, Duterte kami. ‘Di ba malinaw naman siguro ‘yun? Kahit sunugin mo ‘ko dito, mangangamoy Rodrigo Roa Duterte ako.”
(We are for the Dutertes. Isn’t that clear? Even if you burn me here, I will still smell like Rodrigo Duterte.)
Obviously, Padilla and Marcos aren’t being true to their oath to render “impartial justice” in the course of the impeachment trial.
While watching the live streaming of the Senate sessions and the initial convening of the impeachment court, I could just shake my head and wish we could have the likes of Jovito Salonga and his contemporaries, who were true statesmen committed to serve the public good, not some political gods who have shown no respect for human lives and who cannot explain how they have squandered scarce resources.
How can we respect impeachment court proceedings in which some judges have shown no sense of propriety and moral uprightness and have already compromised themselves? Do they still know the meaning of delicadeza?
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
This column also appeared in The Manila Times.
