A Senate of unbridled ambitions and unbounded egos

Its august halls used to be roamed by great minds like those of Recto, Tañada, Manglapus, Salonga and Tolentino, among others.  

 

Now, it has become a pulpit for bullies.  

 

It is probably the smallest Senate in the entire world. We have 24 senators elected at-large by the entire voting population of the Republic, whose population has already breached the 100 million mark.

 

At present, and due to the fact that there are more committees to chair than senators, it is also probably the only legislative chamber in the world where even members of the minority become committee chairpersons, and therefore end up controlling the agenda, direction and timetable for some pieces of legislation.

 

But then again, it is also a Senate where majorities and minorities are not based on party affiliation, but on who voted for or against the election of the Senate President.

 

Theoretically, the Senate is supposed to be the place where the parochial interests of the larger House of Representatives, whose members are elected by smaller districts, would be tempered. It is where ideas become liberated from the confines of specific constituency interests. It is a place where the weight of representation shifts away from the narrow interests of the electorate to the broader and higher interest of the general will to provide wider latitude and higher altitude upon which the political community should be imagined. The Senate is a place where philosophizing and theorizing are supposed to be allowed to seep into speeches, plenary debates and committee hearings, and where higher-order discourses, principles and concepts are allowed to find a place.

 

The fact that senators are elected at-large and have longer terms, and that the Senate is a continuing body where only half of its seats are available to be filled up by new or returning members every election cycle, are symbolic of the higher plane upon which this “upper” chamber of the legislature is supposed to exist compared to the House of Representatives. 

 

Unfortunately, the practice of electing senators at-large may have been also one of the reasons why instead of electing people with great minds, we end up electing some people with big egos. Instead of having as our senators people who are more adept with the rudiments of statecraft, we end up having in the Senate personalities and celebrities who are more adept with the rudiments of stagecraft.

 

From becoming an arena for doing politics as an art and a science, the Senate is now turned into a stage for turning politics into a theatrical performance.

 

There is no doubt that politics has been turned into a spectacle in the era of modern mass media technologies. Live coverage of congressional sessions and hearings enabled political simulacra to set in, where there is now a blurred distinction between the real legislative proceeding and the soap-operatic representation it would create to the TV audience. This sets up the stage for legislators to conduct investigations focusing no longer on the substance and the truth, but more on the mileage and the image such will earn for them in the media. They would conduct hearings less to aid legislation, but more to enable their re-elections.

 

But even if both Houses of Congress are prone to this malady, the blatant displacement of substance in favor of image is more intense in the smaller upper house. It is also in the Senate where egos are far more bloated and over-imagined.

 

And the root cause of this is structural, and lies in the manner we elect our Senators.  

 

Senators are elected with a national constituency. They are also elected not on the basis of majorities or even pluralities, but simply by ordinal ranking of being in the magic 12.

 

Hence, there is more pressure for senators, or those who aim to become senators, to rely on image-making strategies to heighten name recall, and to widen their exposure to the electorate. And to a public fixated on spectacle, appearances and images, and not on the larger national issues which senators are supposed to address, this would include mimicking celebrities, to becoming celebrities, and if these are not possible, to marrying celebrities.  

 

In fact, in the annals of the Senate, we have seen its august halls accommodating at least seven movie actors. We also saw it seating at least two members married to, and at least one about to marry, a movie actress. Two of its past members were elected using their being alleged look-alikes of popular actresses.  

 

Furthermore, this roaming ground of great minds has not been hostile to the entry of news readers and talking heads on TV, even as one former member ended up marrying a TV news celebrity. We also have at least three members who are well known sports personalities. And some of those who are not celebrities went as far as mimicking them, from becoming like stand-up comedians mouthing pick-up lines to simply playing cute to the media-fixated, image-animated, soap opera-addicted public.

 

It is this Senate that now becomes the breeding ground for constantly made-up members ready for the camera and would rather focus on sound bites, and not on meaningful legislation. It is a Senate that has heightened the tendency of its members to play to the gallery. It is now a place where Senate investigations have taken a new turn, virtually throwing out all conventions of decency and impartiality, and turning an important legislative responsibility in aid of legislation into a venue to cut down the prospect of a political rival from becoming President. It has become a place where law and decorum, and even judicial boundaries, take a bow to or are breached by the majesty of individual ambitions.

 

Lest we forget, it is the only Senate that has the infamous record of pushing one badgered, bullied and shamed invited “guest” to take his own life in front of his mother’s grave.

 

And all of this because what we have is a Senate whose lifeblood rests on spectacle and performance, and which has some members who think they are gods and not public servants.

 

If you will have to ask me for a practical solution to this malady, I would offer as a partial solution, which may not be enough but could have a positive effect, the election of senators by districts, and an increase in their number. This will deflate senatorial egos, and make the process of electing them more responsive to the needs of their specific districts. This will in turn clip the irresponsibility of their ambitions, and bound their politics to a more specific set of interests which their narrower constituencies will bestow on them and for which they will be expected to concretely represent.

The author is a former dean of De La Salle University. He is currently a full professor of political science at DLSU. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of this website.