Friday, July 27, 2007 Editorials: Politically fragmented Congress
THIS early, the 14th Congress has already shown very distinct similarity---in the way its members behave during sessions and in the way it operates---with its predecessor.
Although observers can well claim that what is transpiring in the two chambers is normal, still one can get apprehensive with their performance.
In its inaugural session, the House took more than five hours of political maneuvering to decide who should be Speaker.
When it finally elected a Speaker, it was almost time for President Arroyo to deliver her State of the Nation Address (Sona).
The House has many laws to prepare and pass if it would heed what the President, in her Sona, asked its members to undertake.
She needs laws to ensure that her vision of what the Philippines should be in 2010 will be realized.
She envisions this republic to be strategically situated where it will be able to “join the ranks of the rich countries in 20 years.”
The presidential vision, which actually seemed more like a dream, has to have the parallel support of Congress.
Senate
But while the House elected a Speaker that is within the beck and call of the President, the Senate does not seem to have the same temper.
As of this writing, the Senate president was still dividing the spoils of his victory.
Having won the Senate presidency as an opposition senator with the support of a majority coalition, he has to preside over a chamber whose majority expect him to satisfy their respective political aspirations.
The Senate president is thus under tremendous pressure from his peers.
Chaotic Congress
Given the absence of focused motivation in the House and the Senate, how can Congress lend determined support to the President’s apolitical vision?
She had said that it is her “unshakeable resolve that the fundamentals of this vision will by then be permanently rooted, its progress well-advanced and its direction firmly fixed with our reforms already bearing fruits.”
When she wrote her Sona, did she have in mind a “chaotic” Congress?
With the President’s agenda of national growth that is apparently politically “sanitized,” lawmakers who are even now already looking forward to the presidential elections in 2010 would be cool to it.
