Coddlers (Manapat Report; Drilon)

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Coddlers
Sunday, 02 08, 2004

The Senate suffered a black eye yesterday morning, courtesy of its own president Franklin Drilon. He put the Senate to further disrepute by coming up with a faulty logic to prevent Committee Report 517 (on the Manapat fabrication caper) from being approved. To Drilon, nine affirmative votes, no negative votes, and nine abstentions constitute a tie; ergo, the report is not approved.

Starting late afternoon of Friday, Senator Ed Angara had already been standing for hours at the Senate session hall defending the report of his committee on constitutional amendments, revision of codes and laws, signed by eight of its 14 members. No amount of facetious and impertinent questions from the administration senators, mouthing what Drilon had been dictating to them, could put a dent on the findings of the Angara committee. After all, the findings were supported by overwhelming incontrovertible evidence, that Manapat caused the fabrication of documents (and the microfilms) to support the disqualification case against opposition standard bearer Fernando Poe, Jr.. Each question put to Angara only served to underline his full grasp of the issues, and all the more strengthened the evidence that supported his conclusions damning to Manapat. The 33-page main report, with its inch-thick pile of annexes, is impossible for anyone to discredit – or even “manapatize,” as Senator Nene Pimentel now describes anything that has to do with forgery, fabrication, intercalation, substitution, etcetera.

Then the voting on the report came. Sen. Juan Flavier, who voted for the report, was presiding. Drilon and his cohorts were clearly impaled on the horns of a dilemma: If they voted for the report, they would be accused by Malacañang of siding with the opposition; if they voted against it, they will sure as hell be pilloried by a nation who already know the truth behind Manapat’s fabricating operations. Abstention from voting, then, was the only way out from them. When the 9-0-9 voting was announced, Drilon, using a discombobulated logic that would be hooted down by even the unwashed, unschooled man-on-the-street, was quick to declare that since there was a “tie” in the voting, the motion to approve the report was not carried.

For the first time in parliamentary history, anywhere in the world, thanks to Drilon, nine votes of abstention which, by rule, practice and precedent do not count, were placed at par with nine affirmative votes, thereby nullifying the votes that carried the approval of the report.

Despicable, is the word to describe Drilon’s obsequious attempt to curry favor by coddling Manapat, thus exposing himself as just another salivating attack dog of Malacañang. He threw away caution to the wind, and exposed his lack of erudition on the basics of parliamentary rules, practices and precedents, not any different from his insistence that 2/3 of 22 members of the Senate is 13. His logic defies sane and rational thinking.

Does not Drilon know that a vote of abstention cannot be counted for or against a proposition, or for computing the number of legal votes cast, as enunciated by the Supreme Court in Quiem vs. Seriña, 17 SCRA 567? I am sure he knows, as very well he should know the precedent set by the Bar Flunkers Bill approved by the Senate in 1953, where the voting was eight in favor, two against, and nine abstaining. The Senate of that glorious era – with venerable senators like a Primicias, a Tañada and a Recto inhabiting it, when a Drilon and another Recto were thankfully not yet there – rightly ruled that abstention is never a vote. Again, in 1958, when amendments were introduced to the National Internal Revenue Code, the Senate relied on the precedent of the Bar Flunkers Bill, and approved it via a vote of seven in favor, six against and seven abstaining. But if Drilon’s memory might have become besotted by dark thoughts of ambition, he may also want to refer to the cheapest version of Webster’s Dictionary at the sidewalks of Azcarraga – where “manapatized” documents are dime-a-dozen – and he will be elucidated that “to abstain” is “to refrain deliberately and often with a self-denial from an action or practice.” In street lingo, it means “iwas-pusoy.” To Angara, this is “queer.”

Sen. Vicente Sotto III summed it all up when he said, in righteous indignation: “Lokohan na ito! Ang lokohang yan ay nanggagaling sa mga ayaw malaman ng taong bayan ang kalokohang gawa ni Manapat!” Unfortunately, the “lokohan” happened in the wee hours of Saturday morning with no more media to cover the Senate session. Hopefully, the records of the Senate will be made open to the public, for them to capture the foibles of Drilon, et al. in preventing the public from knowing the whole truth about Manapat’s fabrication.

Voting is a ritual central to any legislative body like the Senate. Members place great stock on their voting records, under the assumption that their constituents will judge them at re-election time. But, they must bear in mind that even as they may have already mastered the art of compromise, including bending to the strong influence of those in the Palace by that stinking river, they must still have the courage to display that act of conscience in the search for truth and the moral duty to defend the integrity and credibility of the institution they serve. Sadly, Drilon, Arroyo, Recto, Pangilinan, Barbers, Villar, Magsaysay, Jaworski and John Osmeña, all of them abstaining, are names that do not equate to courage. Rather, they all spell “coddlers.”

Unfortunately for Drilon, et al., nothing now can stop the effects of the nine votes cast to approve the report. No amount of ranting from them can change this fact: Committee Report 517 has been approved, and the committee will proceed to implement the recommendations made in that report, including the filing of charges against Manapat and lawyer Victorino Fornier.

Ambrose Pierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary, defines an “abstainer” as a weak person who yields to the temptation of depriving himself a pleasure. Obviously, Drilon, et al. chose to deny themselves the pleasure of righting the wrong that Manapat had perpetrated.


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