Censure

Who is really being censured in this C-5 road insertion controvery, please tell me? Is it the one named in the committee report of the Senate Committee of the Whole? Or those Senators who defended the accused and tried to hide the truth from us, the tax-paying public?

Who is really being censored in this C-5 road scandal, which, according to the report, cost Filipinos 6.2 billion pesos? Is it the Senators who signed the committee report for release? Or that man who met the one named in Makati Shangri-la a few months ago?

As it stands, the accused has stubbornly refused to face his accusers, but has faced members of the media and used his resoures to get his ads across. My daughter asked–what is so different between the media and the Senate? By choosing the media, Senator Manny Villar probably thought that journalists are more gullible than his colleagues at the Senate. Villar, having been accustomed to the ways of this world, probably thinks that he and his handlers can manage the public sphere more effectively than his not-so-gullible colleagues led by Enrile etal. That Enrile refused that indecent offer shows principled politics, while Villar probably thinks that media could succumb to his millions.

Yet, like the rest of us, journalists are also standing up against Villar. Many radio commentators have said their pieces in public and Villar is being portrayed as a villain instead of an oppressed dog like what his supporters want us to believe.

Villar does not want to be censured but he, himself, is doing censorship. Who among us does not want to know te truth? Who does not want the public to read the Committee report? Is it not Villar?

For me, this is the end of the line for the esteemed Senator. Villar thinks that he has effectively dodged this issue. Woe to us, Filipinos, if we elect someone with an ethical case hanging like a Damocles sword above his head. Woe to us that we now have someone who thinks that it is of no consequence if a member of the Senate refuses to follow the rules and thinks that it is his right to get concessions for being in public office. And woe to us that we now have a man who chose not to face his detractors, his accusers and for thinking that he is above all of us.

The poor, the class which I belong, are not schemers nor robbers. We have a code. We only have our honor and our integrity to latch on. We don’t consider those who steal, who cheat and those without the will to face the consequences of his immoral acts as a member of the society of the poor and of the oppressed.

Anyone can claim that he belonged to the poor. Let his actions speak for itself.