№ 817. Questions of the Day

  

Manila Times

Signs And Wonders

By Diwa C. Guinigundo

President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. could not have chosen more telling words.

Speaking in Tokyo on May 29, he said: “I watched with horror that the Senate has become this.” He was referring to what should have been one of the country’s most important democratic institutions descending into a spectacle of personal loyalties, factional maneuvering, and institutional paralysis.

What has unfolded in the Senate over the past several weeks is no longer merely a political drama. It is becoming a test of whether Philippine democratic institutions can still function credibly amid intense political conflict.

The sequence of events is now familiar: the controversial reorganization of Senate leadership; the dramatic reappearance of a senator who had been absent for months; allegations of attacks on the Senate itself; the arrest of Senator Jinggoy Estrada on plunder charges; the continuing uncertainty surrounding Senator Ronald dela Rosa; and finally, the decision of the former majority bloc to boycott Senate proceedings.

Until Wednesday evening, the majority senators, with the exception of former Senate President Francis “Chiz” Escudero, refused to attend session. Invoking both the Constitution and Senate rules, the remaining senators, 11 from the minority together with Escudero, constituted a quorum, arguing that the arrest of Estrada and the impending arrest of Dela Rosa reduced the Senate’s effective membership to 22, making 12 senators sufficient to conduct business.

The legal debate is important. But the larger issue is institutional.

The message being sent to the public is that the Senate, constitutionally entrusted with legislation, oversight, investigations, and the confirmation of key appointments, is increasingly unable to perform its basic functions because political factions are placing partisan considerations above institutional responsibility.

That perception matters.

Because while financial markets often appear indifferent to political controversies, they are never indifferent to institutional deterioration.

 

№ 816. Lessons from Lord of the Rings

 

 

A Harvard University Law professor stood at a podium last week and told the graduating class that their credentials were not their qualification. He did it without saying the sentence. He picked a hobbit instead.

The story most people will tell about Benjamin Sachs’s last lecture is that a professor surprised his audience by quoting Tolkien instead of Rawls. That is the charming version. The actual version is that a senior labor scholar at Harvard Law School chose, in front of the next generation of corporate attorneys, to hand them the smallest character in the trilogy as their model. He could have given them Aragorn. He gave them Frodo. The choice was the whole sermon.