Senate President Franklin Drilon vows to restore the people’s trust in Congress. If he can do that without committing hara-kiri himself and convincing his fellow “honorables” in the Senate, Congress and Cabinet to do the same, it will be a major, major miracle.
Miracles are hard to come by these days.
After Benhur Luy’s testimony, the Napoles-PDAF scam may be the last miracle for “tongressmen” and “senatongs.” The public mood now favors tomato pelting, mass lynching, musketry executions and similar treatments for officials betraying public trust. Calls for due process like the one aired by Inquirer columnist Amando Doronila are met with comments that Doronila himself should be included as a member of the syndicates.
As rising prices and dwindling incomes further squeeze the windpipes of the overtaxed yet underserved citizens, trust in the national syndicate called Congress cannot rise, kahit na maging sexy pa si Drilon. But maybe a TV spectacle of mass hara-kiri in both houses of Congress could probably begin to restore that trust. But we don’t believe Speaker Feliciano Belmonte’s tongressmen and Drilon’s senatongs are made of such stern stuff. Kapit-tuko, rather than honor, is their stock-in-trade.
Actually, Drilon may not have intended it—but he was actually insulting all of us by making such a promise of trust restoration. Trust the drug syndicates, trust the jueteng syndicates, trust the smuggling syndicates, trust the sleazy legal syndicates, trust the thieving NGOs, trust the crooks, and trust Congress, too?
—JOSE OSIAS,
jzosias@gmail.com