Skip to main content

Worth the Soap

I CAN ONLY describe the hilarious development in the appointment hearing of former senator Mar Roxas at the Senate Committee on Appointments as kadramahan sa buhay Senador, so heart-pounding and drama-filled worth the best soap opera in television today.
 
Early today as she did yesterday when concluded her controversial probe on resigned DILG Undersecretary Rico Puno, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago short of calling all the fires of hell to descend upon Roxas for not attending her Committee's hearing. She considered his absence as a "snob" of her invitation. And today must be her chance to make do her threat of blocking the appointment of Roxas as Secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government.
 
But like an opera written with the versatility of a virtuoso in placing with the viewers emotions, the story shifted from drama, and potentially an action, into a fascinating comedy. Santiago indeed filed her motion to block the Roxas appointment. And as any soap opera following the right script for the moment, Senator Vicente Sotto III appealed to Santiago to withdraw her motion. Per committee rule, a negative vote on a candidate will seal his fate in the appointments.
 
Santiago eventually replied with an impeccable timing of a master commediene: "Mr. President, my high intelligence quotient dictated that he must be considered. Therefore I withdraw my motion to suspend the consideration on the motion of Secretary Roxas."
 
I could imagine the raucous laughter that might brought the Senate down. I have not seen the live coverage of this session; so I can only wish that was what actually happened.
 
At the end of the day, personal offenses or affronts to egos must be transcended to let the works for better public service happen. And such nimble performance of Senator Santiago is work a commendatory claps of our hands or a populous  tap on her back.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gifts of Discounts

SECTION 13 of the New Code of Philippine Judicial Conduct (27 April 2004) stated: Judges and members of their families shall neither ask for nor receive any gift, bequest, loan, or favor in relation to anything done or to be done or omitted to be done by him or her in connection with the performance of judicial duties. Its annotation explains that: Public officials and employees shall not solicit or accept, directly or indirectly, any gift, gratuity, favor, entertainment, loan or anything of money value from any person in the course of their official duties or in connection with any operation being regulated by, or any transaction which may be affected by the functions of their office." The key phrase here is--"in the course of their official duties." It means that as long as a judge remains a judge of Philippine courts, this Code applies, prohibiting any receipt, directly or indirectly, from any person. The question then is: Is a discount a gift? ...

Substate-of-a-Gun

THE MORO ISLAMIC Liberation Front (MILF) boldly declared that Muslims be allowed to run their government even "if they go to hell by their own making, so be it." I go for a lasting peace in Muslim Mindanao; but I have serious doubts on real peace when these armed Muslim leaders cannot accept the fact of life that Mindanao is no longer a Muslim territory after Muslim settlers took the land from the Lumads in the prehistoric Philippines. I came from Zamboanga, and grew there. Despite MILF's claim of representing the dream of Muslims in Mindanao, I have serious doubts if the leaders are merely using this separatist slogan for their own aggrandizement. Look at ARMM under MNLF's Nur Misuari who had nothing to show for the tax shares it received from the government. And reports had it Misuari kept a huge sum from this money for his own accounts. So I have so much reservations on the lasting peace settlement with the MILF can bring. First, how much really of our Muslim si...

The Catholic-Ivory Connection

THE ENORMOUS FIGURES of seized ivory smuggled "through" the Philippines--5.4 tons in 2009; 6.1 tons from China in 2006; 7.7 tons in 2005--prove the huge market of ivory in the country. It may be argued as a mere transhipment affair; but from all indications, it may not be so alone (why in the first place would smugglers from China passes through the Philippines? Does that make Philippine shipments to China safe by reputation?). By these figures alone we can surmise that these smuggling activities happen year in and out. With 2007 and 2008 reporting no cease or seizing of shipments, you can only presume that the supplies reached their intended receivers. I noticed in Brian Cristy's National Geographic article "Ivory Worship"  the perceivable excitement in the Catholic clerics he interviewed when speaking about the ivory icons. The reports from icon-makers in Manila on the regularity of Catholic clerics, religious and laity in their shops to purchase icons...