Merry (rubber stamp) Christmas

It was a stunning feat and it happened in a single day.

On Dec. 13, the joint session of Congress met and went through the motions of approving President Duterte’s second round of request to extend martial law in Mindanao. In the afternoon, the House of Representatives met—well, not exactly. It went through the motions again but this time more barefaced, because it had no quorum to ratify the TRAIN bill. Lo and behold of course, by some executive hocus-pocus, the bill was ratified in a historical case of legislative impunity.

Dutertismo has reared its ugly head. As if to offer dessert after the aperitifs, the budget secretary morphed himself (or showed his true colors) by professing that the Speaker’s decree to deny pork for congressmen who voted against TRAIN is correct. “That was the policy before martial law,” said Benjamin Diokno, and our jaws dropped. Astounding how power corrupts. Political patronage is not on the list of “change is coming” agenda, now it can be unequivocally told.

In the previous extension of martial law in July, Congress listened to M’ranao resource persons. This time, there was none.

Samira Gutoc-Tomawis corrected me on that matter. It was a “neither and nor”—she wasn’t invited to both joint sessions. Her invitation came in July, unfortunately for Samira, from an agency bullied to the core by the President and all his sycophants and funded trolls, the Commission on Human Rights. The feisty M’ranao civil society leader came, nevertheless, with evidence of human rights abuses and indignities against the M’ranao.

The President announced that he expects a fresh round of attacks from the now-decimated Maute group. But where is the invasion, Samira and like-minded M’ranao, asked? “He is backtracking on his liberation statement (‘Marawi is liberated’). In the March 2003 bombing of the Davao airport, did he declare martial law?”

It is not odd to predicate that Mr. Duterte is the typical Islamophobe. He stereotypically allures audiences with the broken record that his maternal grandmother was M’ranao. What was her name? No one has come forward. It is one of his manifold diversions, later to be respinned by Palace spokespersons (jokesters they have become by now) that it was all a joke.

After all the congressional song and dance numbers, it is clear that Mr. Duterte is merely after the raw exercise of power as his Davao days permitted him without a dissenting check and balance. By his megalomania, he has used the Maute as a convenient excuse to feed

his intrinsically disordered sense of dysfunctional governance.

Congress extended martial law in Mindanao without any invasion or consultation, PERIOD. As we write, martial law cannot even hasten the return exodus of thousands of evacuees in cramped evacuation sites to the Islamic city. We can dream of designing Marawi into a tourist mecca, but not without consulting the M’ranao. We can have the vision of urban planner Felino Palafox, but not without consulting the M’ranao. If the intent of martial law is to accelerate the efficient return of the M’ranao, that is not happening. It does not take a 365-day extension of martial law to do that. What Congress merely approved is presidential power lust.

A Congress of parrots that merely accedes to the demands of the executive branch is an imprimatur Congress, nay not even for it is merely an accreditation body that only has to say “amen.” Someday a paper trail or forensic data of phone calls and messages will reveal how the marching orders were relayed—that will be the time for the folly to ricochet.

The government disparages Samira as a sheer dissenter for the voice she gives to the M’ranao. “But all-out war is not new to us. Honor the culture first. You cannot kill terrorism by force. Martial law is totally cut off from the lessons of history. My advice to the administration: Look beyond six years.”

Aside from a railroaded TRAIN, this is Congress’ Christmas gift to the M’ranao people: a healing process that begins only on Jan. 1, 2019, and the hope of rebuilding Marawi in the M’ranao’s own hands taken away.