i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...

legislators have given themselves
privileges—for travel, district
expenses, and other perks—that
they would have never allowed in
other agencies of government.
STATE OF THE NATION. Opposition
congressmen (above) filed an impeachment
complaint against Arroyo, as crowds, including
children, massed up outside the House.
THE STRUGGLE FOR
SPOILS
Most spectacularly of all, Congress
has failed in its primordial duty
to advance the national interest,
which is often sacrificed for the
narrow, short-term interests of
legislators. The organizing principle
of Congress is the struggle for
spoils. Legislators have used their
powers to make laws, to conduct
inquiries, to examine the national
budget, and to vet presidential
appointments to get benefits for
themselves, their allies, and their
kin. Spending on pork barrel has
increased dramatically through the
years, declining only last year and
only because of severe budgetary
constraints and a Senate that was
eager to embarrass the House.
There is also more than ample
evidence to show that the business
and proprietary interests of
lawmakers and their families and
friends have benefited greatly
from preferential legislation, tax
exemptions, and less-than-partial
government regulation.
In short, the majority of legislators
in the last two decades
have behaved like trapos, political
mercenaries concerned
mainly with delivering patronage
to their districts, ensuring their
families remain in power, and
getting as much benefit as they
can from their seat in Congress.
Like the presidency, Congress
has been hounded by scandal.
A few random examples should
suffice: in 1993, House Speaker
de Venecia convinced a number
of representatives to vote against
a bill that would put a ceiling on
foreign-debt payments by promising
to release P200 million of
their pork barrel. In 2000, partylist
representatives exposed how
congressmen were being offered
P500,000 each by House leaders
to vote for the controversial Electric
Power Industry Reform Act or
Epira. In 2003, National Electrification
Administration chief Manuel
Sanchez also confirmed that he
had authorized the release of P2.5
million each to 150 congressmen
who had voted for that law.
The recent reports on how
some congressmen have each
been offered P500,000 not to
sign the impeachment complaint
against President Arroyo only reinforce
the people’s worst suspicions
about Congress. Even the opposition
is tainted, if only because not
too long ago the shoe was on the
other foot. Four years ago, when
Estrada was on the verge of impeachment,
the likes of Ronaldo
Zamora, Rolex Suplico, Imee Marcos,
and Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero,
now at the forefront of the anti-
Arroyo opposition in the House,
were on the side of the disgraced
president. Can Filipinos, therefore,
be blamed if they think the game
of presidential impeachment is
much like musical chairs?
And given this, should it be
any wonder that the president,
in order to survive, has struck a
Faustian bargain with the most
trapo elements in Congress, promising
them the parliament of their
dreams, one that will finally enable
one of them to be the head of
government? Having been deserted
by the reformist, civil-society
elements of her government after
the resignation of the Hyatt 10,
the president now seeks, through
the promise of charter change,
to consolidate her remaining
constituency: the patronage-and
spoils-oriented local officials and
members of Congress. Now that it
is her presidency that is at stake,
Gloria Arroyo is mobilizing not
people power as she did in 2001,
but trapo power.
THE GRAVEST DANGER
In a speech broadcast in the
evening of July 7, when she announced
that she was asking all
her Cabinet secretaries to resign,
the president said, “Over the
years, our political system has
degenerated to such an extent
that it’s very difficult to live
within the system with hands
totally untainted.”
It is a theme she would repeat
in subsequent speeches,
most famously in her July 25
State of the Nation Address. The
message is clear: the problem is
not me, it is the system. Many
Filipinos will agree that the country’s
political system is as tainted
as the president has painted it.
This is why, as the article in this
issue, “So Young and So Trapo,”
shows, even young people who
are elected to the Sangguniang
Kabataan end up being sucked
into corruption and wheelingdealing.
But Mrs. Arroyo is also
being disingenuous. By scapegoating
the system, she hopes to
evade her own culpability.
For many on both sides of
the political spectrum, the problem
is not just the system, but
the people the president says
should be entrusted to reform
it. They object to convening
Congress as a constituent assembly.
To them, it is like giving
the most retrograde elements of
the Philippine polity the power
to craft a new constitution
that would only buttress their
powers and further entrench
patronage politics. Or, to put it
somewhat differently, it’s like
letting serial killers draft the
Penal Code.
It is interesting that the critics
of cha-cha from both the Left and
the Right are one in sensing this
danger. “The biggest flaw” in the
charter change proposals, writes
conservative columnist Antonio
Abaya of The Manila Standard,
“is the fact that the constitutional
amendments will be drafted by a
constituent assembly made up of
trapos and political dynasts who
now control the present Congress
and who will do everything to
retain their positions, power and
privileges in the new Parliament.”
On the opposite end of the
political spectrum, Satur Ocampo,
representative of the leftist
Bayan Muna party-list group
says cha-cha “will not solve but
even make matters even worse
as they only promote cosmetic
change, keep the status quo,
and offer no new solutions…
At the core of these proposals is
the undemocratic idea of keeping
Filipinos farthest away from
instituting political, electoral,
economic, and social reforms.”
In 1986, the 48-member
commission that drafted a new
constitution was made up of
representatives of the Edsa constituency.
They were lawyers,
scholars, NGO activists, street
parliamentarians, a priest and a
nun, anti-Marcos politicians, even
those from the radical Left. These
were, broadly speaking, the
reformist elements of Philippine
society that were mobilized in the
struggle against dictatorship. The
constitution they drafted may be
flawed but it had strong provisions
for human rights and civil
liberties. It made the president
still powerful, but less powerful
than it previously was, with presidential
arbitrariness held in check
by a powerful judiciary, an even
more powerful legislature, and
independent commissions and
offices like that of the Ombudsman.
Moreover, that constitution
had provisions designed to allow
broader representation, especially
in Congress, through the election
of party-list representatives, the
imposition of term limits on all
elected officials, and a curb on
political dynasties.
The truth is that Congress has
been notoriously slow in enacting
the laws that would breathe
life into these provisions. It took
years to pass the party-list law,
and a ban on political dynasties
has yet to be legislated.
If Congress is left alone to
think about charter change,
22 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT