“No conflict of interest... Senador na ako!”
“I’m no rubber stamp... Senador po ako.”
--Bato de la Rosa, Bong Go, on their proclamation as new senators, May 22, 2019
Call them the famous first words of two senators-elect of the Republic, President Duterte’s foremost “lackeys” and closest supporters: “Bato” de la Rosa, former PNP and Bureau of Corrections chief, and Bong Go. former presidential assistant.
De la Rosa was evidently jubilant, as if he had to pinch himself to believe he had just been proclaimed one of the 12 winners in the recently concluded 2019 midterm elections. He was still excited even though homestretch surveys on the race had placed him and Go safely within the magic 12.
No stooge, rubber stamp
Go was less agitated but was as defensive as Bato on the question whether they’d just be “stooges” of the President.
No, reporters didn’t use that word; they said “rubber stamp,” which is worse.
A stooge is a person who play-acts on someone else’s order; the rubber stamp is inanimate object, part of the chain of pre-set actions. (Still unresolved in the simile is who’s who: the one who gives the order must be the rubber stamp while the one ordered is the stamping pad. Which means, Go should’ve said instead, I’m not a stamping pad.)
And hey, isn’t Go “a rubber stamp” of the President? His answer: “Mukha ba akong rubber stamp? Senador po ako. Wala pong rubber stamp sa Senado.”
Same argument
Bato used an argument that runs on the same groove. He said that when he asked Duterte for “guidance” before he’d enter the Senate, Duterte told him, “Bato, you are already a senator of the Filipino people; you are not a senator of Duterte.” He wouldn’t meddle with his work and Bato should do his job “for the benefit of the Filipinos.”
Two motherhood statements: one, each senator is independent, and two, presidents don’t meddle with the senator’s duties. We all wish the declarations to be true but most people know they often are not.
‘Independent republics’
The first is a theory that even senators themselves and defenders of their reputation love to cite in various ways. Most famous of which is the quip that “senators are independent republics” with each member of the Senate thinking he could someday become president.
The second is the ideal proposition, which only the naïve and the hopeful believe in. The president can meddle with anything anywhere in the country. No one, not even those belonging to independent commissions and bodies and the two other departments, legislature and judiciary, are beyond presidential intrusion.
You don’t just see forensics on the interference: no handprint or DNA, no paper trail or voice or video clip. But what the president wants, he can get and the order transmitted by whisper or wind.
It may work
At times, the much-touted independence works. Once a person joins the Senate, there is some epiphany or conversion. Or, the least, an acute awareness of public attention on the legislator.
The wonder is when a rogue behaves like a gentleman as soon as he becomes senator. Which must be qualified though: the knavery may still come out in the shadows, outside the glare of public light. That explains why those three senators were jailed for corruption.
Hope in ‘tradition’
Those who didn’t vote for, or even campaigned against, Bato and Go must wish that the Senate “tradition” of independence will rub off on them.
But don’t pin too much hope.
Even as Go said he would be independent, because senators are independent, in the same breath he vowed to support Duterte “on all his agenda.” He knows the President, Go said, “for the past 21 years and he did not order us to do anything wrong.”
And Bato sees no conflict of interest in himself leading the committee on public order and dangerous drugs. He can handle controversies on the killings in the drug war, despite having plotted and waged it, and still be an independent senator. Not much hope there either.