Choices for the Senate

Two more days to go and we’re off to the polls to choose our local government officials, congressmen and a new set of senators.

As in past political exercises, the senatorial candidates have received more media attention. The race for 12 Senate seats has drawn 33 candidates with varying political and economic ideologies.

Symptomatic of our brand of politics, politicians who practically went after each other’s throat in the 2010 elections are now sharing the same platform and singing the same campaign tune.

They have let bygones be bygones in their pursuit of political power. Indeed, there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

In theory, three sets of senatorial candidates are vying for the people’s mandate: the administration’s Team PNoy, the United Nationalist Alliance and independent candidates representing various political parties.

If the surveys are to be believed, the administration candidates are benefiting from the high level of confidence their principal campaigner, President Aquino, is enjoying from the public.

The UNA candidates are hopeful the popularity of their leaders—Vice President Jejomar Binay, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and deposed President Joseph Estrada—will rub on them.

Independent candidates are giving it their all despite serious limitations in resources and personnel.

Dynasties

To the credit of the country’s major broadsheets, the independent candidates have been given, compared to previous midterm elections, more exposure about their backgrounds and stand on significant political, social and economic issues.

Quixotic their aspirations may seem to be, independent candidates are to be admired for their zeal in espousing and fighting for the principles they believe in.

On Monday, I shall limit my choice of senatorial candidates to four.  It is my symbolic gesture of support for the anti-political dynasty movement that several NGOs and civic organizations, including the Catholic Church, earlier launched.

In a country of almost 90 million, it is unacceptable for six or seven families to dominate the so-called nesting ground of future presidents.

Are we so wanting in intelligent and capable Filipinos that senatorial seats are “bequeathed” by father to son, father to daughter, husband to wife or otherwise made to look like brother-sister acts?

The members of Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitution committed a big mistake in leaving it to Congress to flesh out the constitutional ban on political dynasties. It’s like asking prostitutes to preach the virtues of virginity and decent sexual behavior.

Performance

On top of my list is former Sen. Richard Gordon, incumbent chair of the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) and erstwhile chair of Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.

During his initial Senate term, he shepherded through Congress the Election Automation Law that made it possible for the results of the 2010 presidential election to be known within 48 hours.

He accomplished what for decades had been wished upon by patriotic Filipinos who want clean and honest elections.

As SBMA chair, Gordon was able to preserve, with the assistance of hundreds of volunteers, the facilities of the former Subic Naval Base after it was turned over to the Philippine government by the United States following its closure in 1991.

After losing his presidential bid in 2010, he resumed his public service through the PRC which played a significant role in assisting our countrymen who were victims of calamities.

Next on my list is former Senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr. who is credited with the enactment of the Electronic Commerce Act of 2000 that facilitates the use of electronic (or Internet-based) facilities in domestic and international commercial transactions.

Without that law, many of our commercial transactions would probably be conducted in traditional paper and pencil style.

Magsaysay will bring back to the Senate that brand of sober and deliberate thinking that, sad to say, is absent among our incumbent senators.

Women power

I will also cast a vote for Risa Hontiveros, a party-list congresswoman who represented Akbayan Party at the House of Representatives from 2004 to 2010.

She placed 13th overall in the senatorial derby when she run in the ticket of now President Aquino in 2010, losing by a small margin to party mate Sen. TG Guingona.

As party-list congresswoman, she was a staunch advocate of women’s rights, gender equality and reproductive health. If she succeeds in her second senatorial foray, she can provide balance to the shrill, and often unnerving, action style of Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago.

Rounding up my list of senatorial candidates is Bro. Eddie Villanueva, founder and leader of the Jesus is Lord Church.

Although devoted to his religion, he is not the traditional kind of preacher who denigrates other religions or proclaims the superiority of his beliefs over others.

A former student activist who worked closely with the poor and landless, Villanueva will be a genuine representative of the masses in a chamber dominated by the landed gentry.

By voting for four candidates only, I can help improve their chances of entering the Magic 12.

For comments, please send your email to “[email protected].”