NOT FOR the faint-hearted and most definitely not for the easily-impressed is this brand of politics that our self-important cast of lawmakers are presently playing. If one has watched the news recently, a lawmaker and senator at that, had, on record, magnificently declared for all to hear, that the popular voice of the people (or majority) is above the law. To make matters worse, he has even, again on record, convinced the head of the Department of Justice to agree with him.
Not only does this tell us where they stand at the moment, but it has also given us the clearest hint yet of how low our political standing has sunk with the present administration.
It’s already a stale argument, some people still cling to the belief that it’s our fault, the electorate, because we put these people there…that this is nothing but a rational case of ‘we are what we eat’.
If not for anything else, this standpoint is arrogant, as it continues to insinuate we Filipinos are poorly–informed voters who always seem to choose the wrong candidates into office. There, too, are other critics and scholars who claim that the brevity of our collective memory dooms our choices eventually, insisting we easily forget the crimes against us as a people.
These countless know-it-alls, safely entrenched in some foreign land, pound that in our thick skulls election after election. Why do we always fall for the same trick every time, forgetting all that’s been done to us? They ask, as though that were the most important question.
Perhaps the most insulting comment directly hits at those less fortunate among us who, with lesser education, are always glad to get a thousand as grease money from dirty politicians taking advantage of their poverty during election campaigns.
Be that as it may, we only have to ask where all that is coming out of their mouths is sourced from.
As for those who are still firmly set in their belief that we deserve those who we put to represent us, a word of caution. It is so very convenient to only see our side of the fence, but if it were the other way around and their choices were wrong, I wonder if they’d even be bold enough to call out their errors.
As for our distinguished and honorable solons, one telling us that the law is subservient to people’s clamor, and another, a senate president at that, belittling provisions in the Philippine Constitution as amendable if it doesn’t suit the popular vote, where do you get these preposterous ideas from? Ironically, you are not even men of the law, but put in their position via a populist, hero-worship thinking. How does one expect a noontime comedian slash mediocre actor and a sensationalist media personality to fare well, at least decently, in matters of law? That must be on the minds of ordinary people right now.
