Longing for the Senate of the Past

By Herbert Vego

IT’S hard to imagine “undesirable” candidates topping the senatorial surveys that are widely disseminated today in both the mainstream and online media.

But it should come as an opportunity for us to prove them wrong by voting for alternatives who would bring back legitimacy to the Philippine Senate.

Why should candidates identified with former President Rodrigo Duterte, who is now awaiting trial at the International Court of Justice (ICC) at The Hague for crimes against humanity, remain in power?

Voting for these “trapos” would be like condoning the extra-judicial killings that are now being brought before the ICC bar of justice.

We have had enough of six years of Duterte, in which time the majority of senators transformed themselves into subservient followers who had forgotten the importance of “check and balance” in government.

For example, upon his election as senator in 2019, Francis Tolentino immediately praised President Rodrigo Duterte for his “friendship” with Chinese President Xi Jing Ping. In his first privilege speech in the Senate, he expressed his approval of Chinese fishermen fishing within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone at the West Philippine Sea.

Tolentino said Duterte “may validly enter into legally binding international verbal agreements with other states for and on behalf of the Philippines.”

Should he not have wished for a stance akin to those of the governments of Indonesia and Vietnam who were opposed to China’s intrusion? The Indonesian naval force, to illustrate, had blown up scores of Chinese fishing boats entering its fishing grounds at Natuna Islands.

I remember my youthful days in the 1950s and 1960s when principled senators like Quintin Paredes, Francisco Rodrigo, Camilo Osias, Ambrocio Padilla, Estanislao Fernandez, Lorenzo Sumulong, Lorenzo Tañada, Jovito Salonga, Jose Diokno, Gaudencio Antonino and Rodolfo Ganzon would engage each other in lively debates, often bordering on the President’s decisions and actions.

The Senate of the early 1960s was the scene of credible anti-graft probes, as in the case of American businessman Harry Stonehill, a friend of then President Diosdado Macapagal who had grown a business empire of 18 corporations. His luck ran out when forced to face a Senate investigation for tax evasion, smuggling, bribery, influence peddling and economic sabotage.

The Senate went to the extent of naming then President Diosdado Macapagal as his “protector”.

Sensing political repercussions, Macapagal ordered Stonehill’s deportation without trial in 1962.

But that did not prevent Senator Rodolfo Ganzon from linking Macapagal to Stonehill’s Filipino dummies who were still amassing money from “blue seal” cigarettes in 1965.

Nevertheless, the Stonehill episode hit Macapagal the hardest; he lost his re-election bid against then Senator Ferdinand Marcos.

Those were the days when people adored hard-hitting senators. There was a time when my late father took me (a grade schooler) to the plaza just to hear re-electionist Senator Gaudencio Antonino expose the creeping “tong system” in government offices.  “Tong” refers to bribe money given in exchange for a favor, which has become the new normal today.

Those were the days of the two-party system, when politicians would run either under the Nacionalista Party (NP) or the Liberal Party (LP), thus ensuring check and balance.

-oOo-

NGCP UPGRADE WILL BOOST MORE POWER CAPACITY

THE 12-hour power outage in some parts of Iloilo yesterday (Sunday) was not without compensation. It facilitated a major upgrade to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) Iloilo City substation.

To MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) – Iloilo City’s distribution utility — it was a big step forward. It will allow its Baldoza feeder to load-transfer to a newly-commissioned 100-MVA transformer at the NGCP Iloilo City substation. This upgrade is a crucial step in enhancing the grid’s capacity to meet Iloilo City’s growing energy demands.

MORE Power, the city’s power distributor, has advocated for this upgrade to ensure sufficient grid capacity for the city’s needs in the next 3-4 years. Paving the way for further economic development in Iloilo City.

“This is a significant step forward in ensuring a reliable and robust power grid for Iloilo City,” said Roel Castro, President of MORE Power. “This upgrade will provide the necessary capacity to support the city’s growth and attract new investments.”

This project is a testament to the collaborative efforts of MORE Power and NGCP to ensure a reliable and sustainable power supply for Iloilo City.