Political butterflies

“Are you (taxpayer) willing to spend your hard-earned money to finance political parties?” (Inquirer, 6/14/12) “Ala’y hindi! Gago ga si Pilo (Of course not! Are we fools)?” the Batangueños will readily retort.

And this is, more or less, how the public will surely react to the Senate bill proposing to put up a “state subsidy fund” to “augment” the campaign kitty of accredited political parties to the tune of P350 million, taken annually from the national treasury. The bill’s seemingly immediate approval at the committee level indeed shows how callously self-serving some of our lawmakers’ propositions can collectively become whenever money is at stake.

Already long gorging on their questionable pork barrel trough, they are still looking into taxpayer’s money to pay for their election expenses. How many classrooms that the nation direly needs can that extra outlay build? When can our lawmakers stop adding insult to injury, or vice versa, in the handling of money not their own?  Aren’t they, as early as now, virtually preserving their share of the P2 trillion the government is budgeting next year? These questions and many more truly make the proposed legislation highly imprudent   ab initio.

As things are, the bill has a collateral objective: to penalize politicians who flutter like butterflies from one political party to another. But that is really not anything new. One recalls that in 1988, then Quezon Rep. Wigberto Tañada filed a bill against political turncoatism, having been angered by several of his party mates turning their support for the speakership of Rep. Manuel Villar, a Lakas defector. That bill did not even reach first base in Congress. Why?  Because it bordered on the unconstitutional. It curtailed one’s basic freedom to join—or not or cease to join—an organization. For the same reason, the Senate should not pass this bill.

Indeed, regardless of how monumentally rampant political party defections in these parts have been (in other democratic societies this is relatively unknown), our political parties are still, and will remain to be, legitimately valid associations of people who aim to exercise power in a political system by winning control of the government, or by influencing governmental policies. That aim will continue to be unchanged even if one has changed party loyalty for ostensibly personal advantage in the guise of seeking new party platforms and principles. As a matter of fact, how else does one manage to gain control of government than by joining the party in power? This is admittedly far from the ideal, but there is definitely nothing wrong with being practical!

And so, Sen. Serge Osmeña was perfectly right in outright opposing the antiturncoatism portion of the bill by saying to his colleagues: “Why are you penalizing something that is not a crime?”  One hopes the good senator is opposing the bill in toto; otherwise, his opposition leaves much to be desired.

—RUDY L. CORONEL,

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