Senate in Shambles

THE INSTITUTION that is the Philippine Senate is deeply in a troubling situation demanding redress and retribution. Not from a people in rage over what they see and hear.

Not from others, especially from co-equal branches of governance. Not even from the President, despite his dismay over the going-ons in that other half of Congress whose public regard has plummeted.

Redress can trigger retribution and the easy way out is for the reasonable members of that august institution to cut clean and fast. To be sure, there has already been institutional damage, so recklessly allowed by no other than an insatiable pursuit of the power coming from the podium.

And most certainly, there’s a mouthful to say of minions who have wrongly stood by a colleague motivated by no less than having to cling to the language of force clothed in dubious legalese to mask what is obvious. But, regardless of how voices have rang in strident levels of disrespect, there must be upheld the great need to salvage a public esteem that has gone past respectability.

No other set of men and women ensconced in their comfort zones can do more than raising their own voices of disdain. Surely, an estimable respected institution such as the Senate deserves to be rescued from the pit of dishonor it has been irresponsibly blemished.

It is time to break the stalemate that is happening loud and clear.

It is time to set aside the hows and whys of the Senate’s precipitous descent into the degrading quagmire of total insensitivity.

Much inattention to public needs has already happened simply because those who wield authority choose not to.

Much inaction has caused so much damage in so less a time when what cries for action are left unserved because the power-driven route is easier to take.

Let the silver lining across the horizon be now held with firmer grasp.

Now, not later. Now, that some ray of hope has worthily emerged when a now dominant new majority is in the saddle.

Indeed, the ascendancy into the podium of a new leadership may have taken quite a time.

But that is past. And it is time to end the stalemate.

It is the very time to bring the Senate - once revered but now edging into disrespect - back into a more responsive, more responsible, and more respectable institution.

Now is when this Senate must be brought back to the times when Honorable Senators were worthy torch bearers. What it was? Nothing more than the fine tradition of statesmanship that once cradled its august halls.