Echaves: Bullies

THOSE in government know too well the machinations, backroom negotiations and horse trading involved in budget proposals.

So it’s become an SOP for government heads to pad their proposals and still manage despite budget slashes. As experience has taught them, they’d be lucky if they got 60 percent of their proposal approved.

But slashing the budget from the P678M proposed by the Department of Budget and Management for the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to P 1,000 for 2018 is ridiculous and outright insane.

This, especially since Foreign Affairs Secretary Allan Peter Cayetano assured that the Duterte administration’s budget for Human Rights Action Plan would increase in the next five years.

So ridiculous is the Lower House’s action that many of the 602 synonyms for “arrogant” are apt for the congressmen and congresswomen who, albeit their “Honorable” title, acted otherwise.

Not “honorable” at all. How about high-handed, overbearing, contemptuous, derisive, abusive, smug, hostile, scornful, shameless, ill-mannered, oppressive and despicable to describe their brand of bullying?

How honorable was 1SAGIP party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta’s whose overkill of a motion was a contemptible pandering to a President whose latest actions adhere to the belief that “there are only two sides--the wrong side and my side.”

Where, oh where, is the honor in Minority Leader Danilo Suarez’s suggestion that CHR Chairman Chito Gascon should resign in exchange for budget reconsideration?

It’s as blundering a suggestion as President Rodrigo Duterte’s delivering of fake news that Gascon is not even a lawyer. Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!

The same person who puts his foot in his mouth by asking aloud if Gascon, by showing concern for the killing of teenagers and minors, is perhaps a pedophile!

How honorable must the Lower House look now to the international community for giving the CHR a budget of $20? Pathetic.

How honorable is Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali’s contention that congressmen themselves experienced human rights violations? His case in point: That when they campaigned in areas controlled by the insurgents, the New People’s Army extorted fees from them for permits.

He must still be smarting from the CHR’s protest against his plan to show the alleged sex video of Sen. Leila de Lima during the House probe on the Bilibid drug trade.

And what’s honorable about those legislators who, by moral default through their absence or abstention, only helped swing the decision to slash.

By condemning the sex video as a form of psychological violence, the CHR helped galvanize the protesters against the perpetuation of discrimination and violence against women.

Aware of the netizens’ uproar, House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, in characteristic haughtiness, merely said, “What is important to us is that we are doing our job. Anyway, our constituents are not the social media, not the media, but our districts and the nation.”

“Doing our job” is begging the question, of course. Honorable? Are bullies ever?

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