The Senate...and Manny Villar

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

The Senate...and Manny Villar
Sunday, 08 13, 2006

The word “senate” harks back to the Latin word senatus, which was a council of wise men that deliberated on state policies during the time when Rome was a mighty empire. Acknowledged by political historians as one of Rome’s significant and enduring legacies to the modern world, the Roman Senatus has become the basic model of present-day parliaments. All for good reason — the Senatus made sure that within the body politic there should not arise seeming dictators and tyrants. One of them was even slain by the collective hand of members of the Senatus because, as Shakespeare would have it, “he was ambitious.”

Thus, the Senate has to be considered not only as a collegial body whose task is not only devoted to the enactment of laws, but also as a council whose wise members must ensure that democracy and the rights of the people are protected.

It is a sad footnote in our history that the Philippine Senate, once upon a now fading time, has not been able to prevent the rise of a ruler who went on to run the country with a dictatorial hand. Instead, its members — whose voices were raised in alarm against the militarism that found denouement in Proclamation 1081 — were rounded up and thrown in jail. It is a great consolation, though, to recall that those who found themselves out of jail, but unable to access the padlocked doors of the Senate, valiantly took to the streets and carried on a good fight.

The regime of martial rule has ended, but another one of similar countenance is manifesting itself. It seems that in the Philippines, history has a fatal proclivity of going into a rerun. Somewhere there must be a tragic flaw in our character as a people. We don’t find a similar weakness among, say, our Vietnamese and the Chinese neighbors — once they got rid of rulers they didn’t like, they never went back to a passive political frame of mind that would allow the emergence of leaders who, in thought and in deed, were very much like the leaders they deposed. In short, they did not allow history to repeat itself.

In the Philippines, however, one lives with the gnawing fear that its head of state is purposely drawing the country into a political climate that is reminiscent of the dark days of the 1970s. In the sense that the one who seeks to obliterate the Senate must have a deep-seated ambition to prolong her stay in power, a “tin-pot dictatorship,” as one writer observed, is brewing. An insidious form of martial rule is now being practiced by her. The old Marcosian total-war policy against sectors branded as enemies of the state is now being resurrected as a prelude to get full control of the armed forces. The military is now in full overdrive against people — including hapless members of the media — that it shoots first and questions later.

The next target is the Senate. Happily for the Filipino people, this great institution of democracy has not bowed to the tremendous pressures directed to it by Malacañang, as that other House did. The Senate, as it stands now, is the last bastion the Malacañang-directed agents of Charter change have to demolish. But this is one House whose foundations have proved to be anchored on the firm, unyielding bedrock of principled politics. Neither blasts of political coercion and intimidation nor seductive wafts of promised accommodation coming from Malacañang have proved effective in shaking down its foundations and, most notable perhaps, its main pillars.

The post-Edsa Senate Presidents, from Salonga to Drilon, have led the senators in standing firm against Malacañang whenever the national interest called for it. Recall, if you will, the Salonga Senate that rejected the Palace-endorsed Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, an act of defiance which ended American military presence in the Philippines. Of recent memory is the Drilon Senate, whose members valiantly fought against the constitutionality of certain issuances of the sitting President, unveiled the immorality of scams involving public funds, and exposed, for everyone to gaze at, the ugly face of arrogant power.

Which brings this column now to Sen. Manny Villar, the ninth president of the post-Edsa Senate. His election to that exalted position has been touted as a development that bodes well for the executive branch. Are we to expect then that we will see a Senate that is conveniently subservient to Malacañang? Villar is now the chief executive of the Senate, and leads a group of 22 Senators and a corps of secretariat employees: Will the passage of Malacañang-certified bills be then a breeze? As Senate President, Villar is the ex-officio chairman of the powerful Commission on Appointments: will the confirmation of Malacañang nominees become then simply a walk in the park? Will Villar respond to the strings being pulled by the master puppeteer in Malacañang?

I doubt it.

If we are to judge by his past record, Villar would prove a tough nut to crack. This sipag-at-tiyaga guy has not managed his astounding journey from the slums of Tondo to the boardrooms of the corporate world, to the speakership at the House of Representatives and, as of the moment, the Senate presidency by being obsequious and subservient to those in front of him. Not on your life, man. Do not expect Villar to be excessively eager to please, notwithstanding his being a — well, politician. Behind that toothpaste-ad smile is a politics-savvy businessman dying for a chance to become a good, if not great, statesman.

The chance has now come. Now is the chance for Manuel Villar, Jr. to show the nation — and Malacañang least of all — that he, too, is capable of stepping into the shoes of two great namesakes, namely Quezon and Roxas, who led the Senate in acting for the national interest first and foremost.

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