A source of Senate stink

The nation is agape at how this woman Gigi Reyes has disgraced the Office of the Senate President and the Senate itself as an institution. It is disturbing to see how someone with a distorted sense of superiority can ruin the reputation of her boss, who is no less than the Senate President; how a principal’s overconfidence in his staff can ruin the institution he represents; and oddly, how a woman can strike fear in the heart of even the most superior of superiors in the Senate.

When Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile delivered his privilege speech and moved to declare the seat of the Senate President vacant, saying that he was tired and that he had nothing to hide, he tried to show the Filipino people that he was a man of dignity and integrity. He was almost successful in showing that all he wanted was to serve the Filipino people and nothing more.

But when everything was said and done, lo and behold, Reyes the “Chief of Staff” had to grab the microphone for her two minutes of fame (make that notoriety) and humiliate her principal and the Senate as an institution. Who does this woman think she is that she has the gall to act as if she has the authority to whip senators into place?

I write this out of disgust at her radio appearance and her even worse “public apology” to Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano. This woman needs to realize that the best thing she can do is to shut up.

While she begins her public “apology” with a humble tone,  apparently realizing the public’s shock at her audacity to insert herself (as chief of staff of the Senate President)—and publicly at that—into a “quarrel” among senators, the rest of her statement oozes with insult and arrogance: “My resignation is also due to an honest difference of opinion with my principal … on how to respond …. The Senate President did not agree to deliver the speech, understandably concerned that with the prevailing howl over the media, the Senate and his colleagues may be unduly placed in a bad light.” How dare she think that her opinion of how to address the issues was better than JPE’s? Next time—and God forbid there be a next time—she should have the humility to listen to the wisdom of her principal.

Then she is quick to imply that Senator Cayetano’s speech was not spurred by her careless radio comments but by an ulterior motive to unseat JPE. Talk about twisting the story. Worst of all, she insults the very institution of the Senate—as if her principal were not its head—by saying: “The people now believe that the Senate stinks …. I so agree. It is time to look for where the stink is actually coming from.”

Well, then it was good that she irrevocably resigned because Senator Cayetano’s privilege speech definitely uncovered the stench of her own behavior, one of the biggest sources of the stink she has the audacity to self-righteously talk about.

—DR. CENEN VIDALLON,

senior political analyst,

Hepburn Phoenix Associates,

[email protected]