Oh no, not again!


We are just halfway through the first month of the new year and yet the extreme torture of seeing our elected officials make fools of themselves on TV has already begun in earnest. Arrrgh!!!!!!!! It's enough to make one seriously consider leaving this country for good except that what our elected officials do create animosity for us wherever we go.

Yesterday, the senators who are still smarting from the threat of being rendered obsolete due to the charter change movement, took turns denouncing the US government for not giving up custody of the four US servicemen accused of raping a Filipina at Subic. Many of them actually called for the scrapping of the Visiting Forces Agreement, even if it means losing millions of dollars worth of aid from dear old Uncle Sam. "Our sovereignty and our national pride is not for sale" the feisty Lady Miriam intoned, I mean shrieked.

I would like to advice the good senators to please give up whatever reality-altering medication they are taking - we have been exporting and selling Philippine pride for so long now, the income from which is the only thing propping up our economy. Our best principals and supervisors are working as teaching assistants in the US, our doctors are working as nurses, Filipinos with masteral degrees are working as lowly clerks and even fast food attendants (not that there is anything inherently wrong with these jobs, just that these jobs do not require the aforementioned educational qualifications), our cousins and friends are working as entertainers in Japan and Korea, ad nauseum.

I am not saying that we should let the US get away with bloody murder. All I am saying is that please spare us the sanctimoniousness and the overacting bit. There are better, more sober ways to get a message across.

The hearings at the Senate has resumed. Senator Biazon has presented the surprise "power witnesses" he has been talking about since last year. As it turned out, they were the same suspects - the same shady characters, the same incoherent babble of miscasts and misfits. Senator Biazon says the "children of the tape" (bad, really bad attempt at being pacute) shows that the ISAFP has been wiretapping everyone in the Philippines. If there was any doubt as to what the real intentions of the hearing were and at whose doorstep they intent to drop all the bullshit, the good Senator quipped "This is worst than Watergate where President Nixon ordered the bugging of the opposition." Hearings in aid of legislation my foot! This is another round of efforts to discredit and shame GMA.

Again, please do not get me wrong. I do not mean that people with valid and real grounds should stop discrediting the president. All I am saying is that they have been at it for sometime now and all they have been able to do is waste time and resources and precious TV time. They have not been able to achieve anything except create more problems and more trouble for the economy. For a change, why don't they just do their jobs well?

Are the senators getting any job done at all, I really would like to ask. Are they legislating anything?

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