It’s like this, says Senator Manny Villar yesterday during his lunch meeting with Inquirer editors. As senator, you can endorse a government infrastructure project, get commissions from it or better yet, allow your companies to get something out of it, and escape prosecution. You’ll not be expelled nor reprimanded anyway because, ultimately, the ethics trial against you will be decided “not on evidence, but on numbers.”
So, despite all of these hours spent by the Senate on hearing Senator Ana Madrigal’s ethics complaint on the C-5 road controversy against Villar and inspite of Villar’s media antics, all of these are just circus waste.
Villar’s case just proves how spineless and morally weak the Senate as an institution has become. Everything is political, says Villar, and the Senate cannot muster enough votes to neither expel nor reprimand him. Villar says the Senate will not muster that magical number 16 to expel him nor that 13 votes to reprimand him, since he’s confident of the strong support of Pimentel and the Cayetano siblings.
This is a very dangerous precedent. Villar’s ethics case just shows how weak and spineless the Senate as an institution is. Being a political body, the Senate’s hands are tied, especially in ethical cases involving their colleagues. Since Villar will definitely go scot-free in this one, every Senator now and even future ones, will now be allowed to continue having interests in big companies, enter into contracts with government and earn from it and escape the prosecutory hand of the institution because it’ll all end with “the tyranny of numbers”.
So, the prospect of a number of Senators colluding with each other, and entering into government projects and ultimately escaping the prosecutory hand of Justice, is a stark reality. It’s a number’s game, says Villar and this just proves how vulnerable the people’s money are in the hands of Senators. What would now prevent other Senators from doing the same thing, give P.R. money or share some fiduciary interests with his colleagues and getting away with just a slap on the wrist?
Lastly, Villar’s actions and his disrespect in the Senate as an institution is a direct affront to the authority of its president, Senator Juan Ponce-Enrile. It just proves how weak a leader Senator Enrile is. More than this, it also shows how irrelevant the Senate is, in the scheme of things.
With Villar’s Sipag and Tiyaga, the Senate, as an institution, has now become a rag-tag band of engineers, lawyers, and real estate magnates. Corruption has now reared its very ugly head in the last bastion of democracy and Filipino values.
Popularity: 1% [?]
The notion of ‘tyranny of numbers’ will work both ways for Villar – him the victim, or him the beneficiary, depends on which side of the political fulcrum the anecdotal ‘committee of the whole’ will go.
Either way it goes, it does not follow that the Senate as an institution is deemed weak or spineless. In the end, people no longer mind how the whole decides on this ethics case any more than for them to be able to understand what the case was really all about.
But even if we grant that it made Senate weak, it made the people strong in their resolve not to vote for yet another Villar.
Sure – but people are raring to vote for an Erap – quite inconsistent ain’t it
to Patricio: Do you have a transcript of what Villar said, because I think you are taking literary liberty with the truth with this
HA! Ha!Ha!Ha!HA! Pag nabasa ni Villar, baka mag-libel suit dahil sa isinulat ni Patricio Mangubat.
ibinoto ang mga taong alam ng corrupt, at nagtaka kung bakit may corruption
hay buhay :lol:
bong,
Ano ka ba naman pare.
Look at it this way please.
There is a coming soon movie, say, entitled – “The Next President”.
Then you go to the theater where this is shown. You are convinced that the ‘preview’ seems to assure you it is going to be great to watch.
So pay for the ticket and you find a seat and then goes the show, runs the story.
Supposed that you didn’t like what you have watched, you felt shortchanged.
Are you really at fault in having made a prejudgment? a calculation? an estimate?
This goes true with voting.
Free admission would be an end by itself.
Primer:
REAL-LIEF – That’s not the only movie in town – Estrada and Roco – you were going with the winnable – NOT with the competent :lol:
We are talking of a “Billion Peso” Presidential Aspirant. To have
your Company Profit Enormously because of your Positiion as Senator
is something like Pickpocketing from the Taxpayers. It is not right.
It is Ugly. And, resoundingly Unethical for a Sitting Senator.
To aspire for the Presidency, inspite of this question of your
wrong conducts. Is like having an Elephant Hide. “Makapal ang Pagmumukha”.
Anyway, that Crook Bolante of the Fertilizer Scam is trying to become
a Politician. These are the people giving us trouble. Would you like
more of them?
If Iggy got elected, Jocjoc can follow suit, tasio.
I suggested the voters should be holders of a master’s degree so we can be sure, they can vote wisely. Until then, when we have an overpopulation of the ‘bobonic class’ (forgive the slur), then, it is almost predictable who wins this dirty game of politics.