BEFORE the pandemic, they took to grandstanding like a child takes to lollipop. At the drop of a hat they investigate any issue that gives them the opportunity to demonstrate on national television how good they are, but ironically only at dressing down people who do not answer their questions properly.
Then all of a sudden they made themselves scarce. Our impeccably-dressed and expensive-vehicle-driving or chauffeured senators and representatives are nowhere to be found, so to speak, at a time when so much is expected of them.
This is strange. The nation is in the grips of a pandemic, a crisis that presents the ultimate opportunity to grandstand for a good cause. What could get votes better than if our senators and representatives would be in the frontlines helping in cash or in kind people who are in dire need of the essentials for survival?
Instead Senate President Vicente Sotto III criticizes citizens who advertise their personal donations. He also insists, albeit rightly, that local executives post their list of recipients of government’s cash assistance. But how about he and House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano advertise their members’ personal (yes, I said personal and not from your financial backers) donations to the fight against Covid-19?
And how about posting the list of the recipients of your donation? Of course, if you did not give there’s nothing to post. But if you gave, people have the right to know if your cash or in-kind help did not just go to your loyal ward leaders.
It would seem like our legislators are cowering in the safety and comfort of their luxurious residences. They are leaving people to speculate that they might be counting their losses when so many of their projects, from which they get fat commissions, cannot be implemented.
They are losing so much already that they don’t want to lose some more by giving from what they have stashed away. They need all of their money to buy votes in the next elections.
Yet the worst is still to come. If I know our legislators they are not learning anything from the pandemic up in cloud-9’s thin air and will revert to the old normal after this is over. I am willing to bet my bottom peso they will not change from the experience and will resume their grandstanding and self-serving money-making ways when somehow, without their help, we would have licked Covid-19.
That puts the hope of the country on the shoulders of voters who should wake up from this nightmare firmly resolved to kick their sweet-talking legislators out of Congress in the coming elections. Many governors and mayors seem to be in the thick of the fight against the virus. But where are our legislators? Your guess is as good as mine.