Footnote to a farce 02/13/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- I never got to comment on it last week, what with one thing and another happening. But it’s too important to let pass.
That was the House of Representatives’ ethics and privileges committee’s decision to suspend Alan Peter Cayetano for 45 days. The vote, to nobody’s surprise, was 35-3-1. The lone abstention came from Butz Aquino who probably said it best: “I don’t want to have a part in this kangaroo court.”
Cayetano was suspended for accusing Mike Arroyo, also called the First Gentleman (well, we also call Raul Gonzalez justice secretary, Norberto Gonzales national security adviser, and Ronaldo Puno and Benjamin Abalos guardians of clean elections) of harboring deposits in a bank in Munich.
The only good in this is that it will probably catapult Cayetano upward in the voting charts. Who knows? Maybe it might even make him No. 1 when the smoke clears in May, assuming this country is able to thwart the advance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as I wrote about yesterday. Cayetano’s suspension has yet to be approved by Congress in plenary session. What can I say? I most ardently hope it does, if only to give Cayetano more free advertisement than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s expensive ads paid for the charity sweepstakes office that now litter the NBA games on Basketball TV like debris after a super storm, do for the administration candidates. The equation is simple: Jose Pidal’s enemy is Juan de la Cruz’s friend. I can only plead earnestly with our congressmen: Please oppress Cayetano some more.
That is the only good thing about it. Everything else stinks.
To begin with, the ethics and privileges committee is so only in that Mike Arroyo represents gentleness, first or last, and Raul Gonzalez dispenses justice, legal or poetic. Look at the creatures that infest it and ask yourself if most of them have even heard of the word “ethics,” much less grasped its meaning. You can only be certain they have heard of the word “privileges,” clinging as they do to them with all their might.
While at this, the entire premise of Mike Arroyo’s suit against 43 journalists (last I looked) is that he is not a public official, he is an ordinary citizen. Therefore journalists may not simply claim good faith when they attack him, they must pay for the trespass in cash or kind. Well, if he is an ordinary citizen, why has the House ethics committee moved heaven and hell to try to remove one of their own from their ranks as though he were an absolute contamination because he dared raise as a matter of fundamental national interest the possibility he is not just a crook but a most unpatriotic one? If I recall right, a Muslim congresswoman attacked an ordinary citizen, in the form of a representative of a catering outfit, with a knife in the very premises of the House complex for inadvertently contaminating her soup with bits of pork, and she never met with any sanction.
Which brings us to Cayetano’s “crime.” Did he make a mistake in identifying the deposit? Probably. Does he have the right to get a waiver from the First Gentleman, one that applies to all possible deposits abroad? Absolutely. It’s not just he who has the right, the entire Filipino nation does. Ping Lacson did issue such a waiver when he was on the hot seat, and, as he pointed out to me in a text message last week, even went on to file a couple of bills that would make such a blanket waiver compulsory. The bills went unheeded but he vows to revive them if he gets back to the Senate.
At the very least, Cayetano’s mistake is an honest one. At the very most, his motivation is a laudable one. Contrast this with a humongous crime that remains unpunished to this day. That is an incumbent president calling up a Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner right in the middle of canvassing and asking to win by a million votes over a nearest rival. That mistake is a thoroughly dishonest one, having as it does the gravest consequences and its perpetrator having as she did full knowledge and full consent, which are, if I remember my catechism right, the requirements for mortal sin. And its motivation sucks, its perpetrator simply wanting power at any cost. Yet Congress’ ethics committee never ruled to suspend its perpetrator from power, it promoted her to dictator.
But in the end the worst thing about the fate Cayetano has met in the hands of his inferiors (they are by no means his peers) is that they make a farce of elections. Frankly, I don’t know why we’re going ape about the May elections. Frankly, I don’t know why we’re betting feverishly on the candidates like the loud and drunken crowd in off-track betting stations. We already have the killings and the cheating that are making a mockery of elections. But added to that, you can get voted into office and lose it anyway on various ruses by a corrupt and ruthless administration.
We’ve already seen the attempted ouster of Jojo Binay as mayor of Makati City and the actual ouster of Pasay City Mayor Pewee Trinidad and other elected public officials. We’ve already seen the attempted ouster of Legaspi Mayor Noel Rosal, with fake ballot boxes suddenly materializing in the Comelec premises and the Comelec ruling that a rival candidate actually won the vote. And now we see a representative suspended by Congress for a crime against the people, the people defined as Mike Arroyo. Different tactics, same result. In this country, it’s not enough to be voted by the voters to hold office. You have to be voted as well by the Department of Interior and Local Government, Comelec, Congress, and whomever they’ll think of next.
You don’t get murdered or cheated in the polls, you’ll get massacred afterward.
Cayetano’s fate in the hands of his colleagues razes down the entire concept of an elected official. But then why expect them to appreciate the concept of an elected official? Their big boss is not.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=49073
That was the House of Representatives’ ethics and privileges committee’s decision to suspend Alan Peter Cayetano for 45 days. The vote, to nobody’s surprise, was 35-3-1. The lone abstention came from Butz Aquino who probably said it best: “I don’t want to have a part in this kangaroo court.”
Cayetano was suspended for accusing Mike Arroyo, also called the First Gentleman (well, we also call Raul Gonzalez justice secretary, Norberto Gonzales national security adviser, and Ronaldo Puno and Benjamin Abalos guardians of clean elections) of harboring deposits in a bank in Munich.
The only good in this is that it will probably catapult Cayetano upward in the voting charts. Who knows? Maybe it might even make him No. 1 when the smoke clears in May, assuming this country is able to thwart the advance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as I wrote about yesterday. Cayetano’s suspension has yet to be approved by Congress in plenary session. What can I say? I most ardently hope it does, if only to give Cayetano more free advertisement than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s expensive ads paid for the charity sweepstakes office that now litter the NBA games on Basketball TV like debris after a super storm, do for the administration candidates. The equation is simple: Jose Pidal’s enemy is Juan de la Cruz’s friend. I can only plead earnestly with our congressmen: Please oppress Cayetano some more.
That is the only good thing about it. Everything else stinks.
To begin with, the ethics and privileges committee is so only in that Mike Arroyo represents gentleness, first or last, and Raul Gonzalez dispenses justice, legal or poetic. Look at the creatures that infest it and ask yourself if most of them have even heard of the word “ethics,” much less grasped its meaning. You can only be certain they have heard of the word “privileges,” clinging as they do to them with all their might.
While at this, the entire premise of Mike Arroyo’s suit against 43 journalists (last I looked) is that he is not a public official, he is an ordinary citizen. Therefore journalists may not simply claim good faith when they attack him, they must pay for the trespass in cash or kind. Well, if he is an ordinary citizen, why has the House ethics committee moved heaven and hell to try to remove one of their own from their ranks as though he were an absolute contamination because he dared raise as a matter of fundamental national interest the possibility he is not just a crook but a most unpatriotic one? If I recall right, a Muslim congresswoman attacked an ordinary citizen, in the form of a representative of a catering outfit, with a knife in the very premises of the House complex for inadvertently contaminating her soup with bits of pork, and she never met with any sanction.
Which brings us to Cayetano’s “crime.” Did he make a mistake in identifying the deposit? Probably. Does he have the right to get a waiver from the First Gentleman, one that applies to all possible deposits abroad? Absolutely. It’s not just he who has the right, the entire Filipino nation does. Ping Lacson did issue such a waiver when he was on the hot seat, and, as he pointed out to me in a text message last week, even went on to file a couple of bills that would make such a blanket waiver compulsory. The bills went unheeded but he vows to revive them if he gets back to the Senate.
At the very least, Cayetano’s mistake is an honest one. At the very most, his motivation is a laudable one. Contrast this with a humongous crime that remains unpunished to this day. That is an incumbent president calling up a Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner right in the middle of canvassing and asking to win by a million votes over a nearest rival. That mistake is a thoroughly dishonest one, having as it does the gravest consequences and its perpetrator having as she did full knowledge and full consent, which are, if I remember my catechism right, the requirements for mortal sin. And its motivation sucks, its perpetrator simply wanting power at any cost. Yet Congress’ ethics committee never ruled to suspend its perpetrator from power, it promoted her to dictator.
But in the end the worst thing about the fate Cayetano has met in the hands of his inferiors (they are by no means his peers) is that they make a farce of elections. Frankly, I don’t know why we’re going ape about the May elections. Frankly, I don’t know why we’re betting feverishly on the candidates like the loud and drunken crowd in off-track betting stations. We already have the killings and the cheating that are making a mockery of elections. But added to that, you can get voted into office and lose it anyway on various ruses by a corrupt and ruthless administration.
We’ve already seen the attempted ouster of Jojo Binay as mayor of Makati City and the actual ouster of Pasay City Mayor Pewee Trinidad and other elected public officials. We’ve already seen the attempted ouster of Legaspi Mayor Noel Rosal, with fake ballot boxes suddenly materializing in the Comelec premises and the Comelec ruling that a rival candidate actually won the vote. And now we see a representative suspended by Congress for a crime against the people, the people defined as Mike Arroyo. Different tactics, same result. In this country, it’s not enough to be voted by the voters to hold office. You have to be voted as well by the Department of Interior and Local Government, Comelec, Congress, and whomever they’ll think of next.
You don’t get murdered or cheated in the polls, you’ll get massacred afterward.
Cayetano’s fate in the hands of his colleagues razes down the entire concept of an elected official. But then why expect them to appreciate the concept of an elected official? Their big boss is not.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=49073
posted by dqfan06 @ 11:42 AM
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