By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

A broadsheet reported Francis “Chiz” Escudero owning up to the coup that ousted Juan Miguel Zubiri, but rejected speculations that Malacañang was behind the power grab.

The new senate president, IMHO, was lying to his teeth.

Escudero said he had no prior knowledge of the plot against his predecessor but on the committee hearing of Bato de la Rosa, Jinggoy Estrada and he were obviously playing Katzenjammer Kids to instigate the contempt charge on resource person Jonathan Morales. That appeared to me like his “revalida” or final qualifying exam for a Palace nod.

Escudero himself admitted, “It was on Thursday when I started to talk to [my colleagues] so I don’t know how he came to know about it on Wednesday,” in response to Zubiri’s claim that he was made aware of the plot to unseat him as early as May 15.

Soonest after Zubiri delivered his valedictory, Heart Evangelista was already at hand for the swearing in of her husband.

Escudero is but a whimper compared to the strong hand of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and First Lady Liza Araneta in dislocating Zubiri. As to whether money changed hands, one can only surmise gift-giving coincided with hosting a dinner for senators in Malacañang.

Notably, the new senate president did not say anything about being surprised by such gesture by the first couple. There is nothing ceremonial about that. The group picture was simply an affirmation of an earlier conspiracy. If Escudero wanted the general public to believe his disavowals, then he should not have proven the truth in a picture that so to speak, “launches a thousand ships”.

Senator Ronald dela Rosa, who was seen weeping as Zubiri delivered his farewell speech on Monday, admitted the next day he was actually the 15th senator to sign the resolution to remove Zubiri. “Bato”  turned into sand.

Zubiri said he was “dumbfounded” at Dela Rosa’s admission, as the latter erstwhile belonged to his bloc. If I were in his shoes, I would have not even cast a vote. In the parliamentary division of the house, there is such a gesture called “abstention”. His signature was a knife to the back of Zubiri. 

“I thought of strange things in my political career and this happens to be the strangest… I am in shock,” Zubiri, adding: “But that’s politics. There are no permanent friends, only permanent interests.”

Escudero parried insinuations that the Palace helped him rise to the government’s third highest elective post following his predecessor’s claim that he was removed after he “ruffled some feathers.”

The public perception is that Zubiri took the hit because he was protecting the Senate from Malacanang’s biddings. What he exposed is credible: “I have never dictated my position [on] any of you, and I always supported your independence, which is probably why I face my demise today. I failed to follow instructions from the powers-that-be.”

To predictably reiterate, the first activity of Escudero in the senate leadership is taking the senators and their spouses to a dinner at the Palace the very next day. Oh, what a farce!

Flawed political circus

I am reminded of a Turkish proverb – “When the clown enters the palace, he does not become king. The palace turns into a circus.   

Marcos and his allies in the senate were displeased with Zubiri for allowing the hearings of the “PDEA (Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency) leaks” inquiry by the Dela Rosa-led Senate committee on dangerous drugs, which linked the President to a botched anti-illegal drug operation in 2012.

Expectedly, Marcos threw his support behind Escudero’s election. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the president praised Escudero’s record as a legislator, saying “I extend my support to the new Senate President, Chiz Escudero. His legislative record and commitment to public service have distinguished him as a dedicated leader,” he said.

Escudero’s late father, Salvador “Sonny” Escudero III, worked with the Ferdinand Edralin Marcos Sr., serving as the latter’s agriculture minister from 1984 until the latter’s removal from office in 1986.

But for former longtime Senate President Franklin Drilon, Zubiri’s ouster was a consequence of the country’s flawed political party system. The retired senator could not help but reflect he was not surprised by the senators’ move, having seen it happen several times in the course of his own career.

“That is, to me, the effect of a lack of a party system… In mature democracies abroad, you will see that the decisions are made on the basis of the political party decisions. Here, there’s nothing like that,” he said.

“I was there. I was Senate President four times. Some of the times, I was relieved by my colleagues of the post, expressing sentiments that one could only accept it as an impaired system.

We imperfectly copied the United States bicameral model. The American framers of our Constitution, however inserted some hot buttons – first our vice president is elected separately from the president. In the US the president and vice president are elected as one-party block. This assures continuity of programs. Second, the vice president automatically becomes the senate president.

The fulcrum of the legislative mill at Capitol Hill, is the lower house of congressmen. who are elected by “representative districts” based on population or constituency count, the House of Representatives. This is why they elect their “speaker”.

Senators are elected at large – two per state. The vice president acting as vice president is the umbilical cord of the executive to the legislative branch intended to accelerate efficiency in law making soonest the lower house establishes a position on any policy matter.

As in any august body, there is also some circus that happens in the interaction of the two houses at Capitol Hill, but the battle is mostly issue-based and the supreme importance is given to how each congressman or senator votes. In the Philippine setting, the compass is on personalities and their idiosyncrasies.

Idiocies are also avoided in the US setting because both houses have a common thinktank – the Congressional Research Survey, a separately-funded body that provides a wide data base and strategic studies on every issue confronting the legislative mill.

In the Philippine setting, each law maker has his own staff, who gathers information primarily to vouchsafe the legislator’s self-interests. This will explain why government has no institutional memory.

More circus at hearings

This is obvious whenever there is a hearing conducted by Congress. Committees invoke this procedure in-aid-of-legislation but often ends up being spectacles for legislators badgering their resource persons, sometimes violating their civil rights and even jailing them for contempt, or for those who are seeking another term, grandstanding in-aid-of-re-election. The most common denominator is these hearings has exposed the tremendous drought of logic by our legislators.

Now showing is the Senate investigation of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators or illegal gaming activity in Bamban, Tarlac. A neophyte senator who prominently built his experience in show business asked a local mayor summoned to be a resource person – “Do you speak Kapampangan (a Central Luzon dialect)? Because if you don’t you have been lying to this committee. If you claim you grew up in Tarlac, it is impossible that you do not know how to speak Kapampangan.”

How can a senator miss up on his Wikipedia? “Kapampangan is spoken by half of the population followed by Ilocano spoken by 41%, mostly in the northern towns bordering Pangasinan. Everybody understands the Tagalog language.”

The local mayor speaks Tagalog fluently.

Instead on focusing on investigating the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, who has regulatory powers and oversight responsibility over POGOs, senators Risa Hontiveros, Willian Gatchalian and Raffy Tulfo have been pillorying this local mayor of Chinese descent, to the point of insi8nuating that she is a China spy.

I am happy about the show of low intelligent quotient and condescending demeanor by our senators in this hearing because I see in contrast the quality of one local mayor and her understanding of public service that brings hope to good governance for the future of this country.

This Filipino-Chinese foundling promises to go places in our society and I just pray that the predatory attitude of senators do not discourage her from pursuing higher attainment in government.

Meanwhile, the issue in this investigation are not the questionable private documents of the local mayor pertaining to circumstances of her birth, her growing up secluded in a farm, her building enormous wealth and her public office – which are all best contested by any of her political opponent in the local elections of 2025.

The municipality only provided a venue and usual permits to the POGO. Any further than that, matters will have to be resolved outside of the senate, and more appropriately in the judiciary.

Instead of feeding their racing suspicions about her, the public will be best served if Hontiveros, Gatchalian and Tulfo sleuth their way to finding why such POGO operations could function until its closure for years, with impunity. Despite repeated raids by the police, this POGO operations reeks of a protector in the highest levels of government.

The Philippine Gaming Corporation reports directly to the president of the Philippines. Al Tengco, bruited to be Bongbong’s BFF or “best-friend-forever”, is its chair and CEO. Is this the reason why public scrutiny has been diverted to a lowly mayor of Bamban, Tarlac?

   

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