WHEN the leaked video of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump caught him bragging about groping women without asking permission, he was castigated non-stop by the media and survey polls.
His fellow bragger, radio and TV host Billy Bush, was soon kicked out of his “Today” show on the National Broadcasting Corp.
The American public was so enraged that Bush worried about the end of his media career.
Over here, congressmen packed in the hearing room to direct questions to a Philippine senator’s ex-driver and alleged former lover.
Purportedly, the hearing was to get ex-driver Ronnie Dayan’s take on the illegal drug trade involving alleged
drug lord Kerwin Espinosa and Dayan’s former boss, once justice secretary and now Sen. Leila de Lima.
And if congressmen only had that in mind, the who, what, when, where, why and how could immediately have been known.
Who were involved? How far up the organization ladder did the corruption and protection go? The congressmen were allowed some minutes to question, and could even use the time from other congressmen who preferred to listen.
Despite this, they frothed in the mouth with words and expressions akin to an exorcism.
Loud, ribald laughter over the love affair likened to a storm’s intensity levels.
Talk of the de Lima-Dayan love affair in terms of a storm’s intensity levels. Rep. Salvador Belaro Jr. had the gall to ask “Kailan kayo nag-climax…ng intensity 5,” feigning to sound like it was a by-the-way.
Then we learn that Belaro represents the Ang Edukasyon Party-List. What a poor embarrassment of a representative for such group! Shame, shame, shame.
Then there was Rep. Fredenil Castro of Capiz whose serious mien did not prepare anyone for the utterly irrelevant repetitions about love being “wagas, dalisay at tapat.” This guy just loved hearing his voice.
And then there was Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas of Ilocos Norte asking whether de Lima and Dayan stayed in the same room.
The same Fariñas accused by his wife, the once beauty queen Maria Teresa Carlson, of domestic violence.
This former Miss Young Philippines once told the Probe Team TV show that Fariñas’s violent acts included slapping, physical abuse, beatings, boxing, water torture, a gun in her mouth, and something akin to
waterboarding.
Carlson eventually committed suicide in 2001 by jumping from the 23rd floor of their Platinum 2000 condominium in
Greenhills, San Juan City.
In my younger years, a teacher advised us to know a suitor’s family, the better with which to observe him. She said, “How he treats his mother and his sisters is how he’ll treat you.”
Could Belaro and Castro could be any different from Fariñas?
Confronted with the video airing, Trump said “it was all locker-room talk.” We see how it was so pale and timid as compared to how Filipino congressmen shamed a woman, albeit a senator.
After that congressional hearing, did we know anything better about the illegal drug trade operations?
Questions, questions everywhere, but all about a love given to the wrong man, while some lascivious congressmen lapped up every salacious bit thrown their way, and others enjoyed the lynching.
What is it with some men? Their brains are so in their gonads that once zipped open, they all fall out.
(lelani.echavez@gmail.com)