A FEW weeks ago, seasoned election lawyer Romulo Macalintal made a bold statement, saying both houses of Congress should be abolished for being unproductive and a waste of taxpayer's money. He proposed amending the Constitution to abolish Congress for just six years, after which people would be given the choice whether to revive Congress.
It is easy to dismiss the lawyer’s statement as bombast. But the way Congress acts makes one wish for Macalintal to have his wish fulfilled.
Congressmen Samuel Pagdilao, Rodel Batocabe and Christopher Co have recently filed a bill seeking to make a separate detention facility for high-profile, or VIP, prisoners, such as politicians.
Such idea was proposed in light of developments in the P10-billion pork barrel scam to which a number ofsenators and congressmen have been linked and are poised to be arrested. The bill’s authors claimed that a certain “class” of prisoners must be segragated for security and humanitarian reasons.
Apparently for the three lawmakers, it is humanitarian to use taxpayer’s money to ease the incarceration of public officials who stole from the people. What’s more bothering is their use of the term “class” to refer to those people implicated in the pork barrel scam. It would seem that they are trying to transpose India’s caste system in the Philippine penal setting, with thieving Congress members as the equivalent of the Brahmins. They are in fact confirming that indeed powerful persons are never punished. People like Pagdilao, Batocabe and Co are the reason why impunity thrives in the country.
Among those set to be arrested are Senators Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada and Juan Ponce Enrile. It would have been better if they just sat quietly and waited for arrest warrants to be served upon them; but Revilla and Estrada instead went on a campaign of political gimmickry. Revilla went around protesting his innocence and crying political persecution, even using God’s name in vain. Estrada meanwhile demanded cable television in prison. Photos of the senators’ detention room are making the rounds of the social media. They looked nothing like prison—they're a thousand times more grand than the bunkhouses the government built for the survivors of Typhoon "Yolanda."
The Constitution prohibits the deprivation of liberty without due process of law in the name of justice. But there is no justice where, after due process is observed, powerful men are allowed to bring the comforts of liberty along with them in prison.
On one hand, there is a proposal to abolish Congress, on the other, one seeking to classify criminal Congress members as VIPs. It is easy enough to judge which proposal is more practical.
