The real issues against the Senate

A NEWSPAPER colleague on this page has raised the issue of the spiraling cost of the proposed new Senate building in Bonifacio Global City (BGC), from its original estimate of P4.8 billion to P23.3 billion. This cost overrun seems to exceed acceptable limits and must be explained to the taxpaying public.But having served in the Senate for two consecutive terms as Senate majority leader to six Senate presidents, I find that this is not the most important issue, serious as it is.The issues are many. They begin with the dynastic capture of the Senate. Several family dynasties have managed to put a mother and son, a brother and sister, and two half-brothers sitting there simultaneously as members. This has not improved the very low level of intellection and discourse on public issues and the absence of high-minded plenary debate. Until my last days in the Senate (2001), mainstream media still found it worthwhile to cover plenary proceedings (live for TV); the coverage stopped when the plenary debates stopped.In their place, sensational committee inquiries in aid of legislation have become the flavor of the day, with some senators behaving like criminal prosecutors and shaming resource persons and witnesses with all sorts of allegations. How to restore the Senate to its original place as the highest deliberative assembly in the land is the much more serious issue, but it deserves a more extensive discussion, so we shall try to focus for now on the proposed new Senate building.The issue of cost is certainly highly important, even though billions appear to have been lost in various corruption cases. But before that, the real issue is why build the new building in BGC, so far away from Batasan Hills in Quezon City where the House of Representatives, the much bigger half of Congress, is?The Philippines maintains a bicameral Congress made up of a House of 316 members (and counting) and a Senate of 24. The two houses meet jointly at the opening of every Congress to listen to the president's address and are mandated to do so in joint session if they want to propose constitutional amendments as a constituent assembly or if they want to declare the existence of a state of war, or review and revoke the president's proclamation of martial law. As one House alone cannot pass a bill without the concurrence of the other, two committees from both houses must meet as a bicameral conference committee to reconcile disagreeing provisions of every proposed legislation. This can become a daily activity.Given the work that they do, common sense dictates that both houses be located within one building or at least in two separate buildings close to each other. In most countries with a bicameral Congress, this is how it works. In our case, the old bicameral Congress used to be located in the old building on Padre Burgos Street in Manila, next to the present City Hall, which now houses the National Museum. The Senate occupied the upper floor, while the House, which was much smaller then, occupied the ground floor.The proclamation of martial law in 1972 shut down Congress for several years; when President Marcos Sr. revived Congress in 1978, he decided to establish a unicameral interim Batasang Pambansa (IBP) composed of regional assemblymen throughout the country. I sat as a member of the IBP, having been elected the first of 12 members for the Bicol Region, while keeping my Cabinet posts as press secretary, presidential spokesman and minister of public information.There was no place big enough for the new IBP. So, in one working session, I suggested to the president that he consider the new building that was being built near a garbage dump in Quezon City for the Department of Education. The president liked the idea, so the IBP occupied the new building even before it could be fully completed.In our first Batasan session, the veteran legislator Assemblyman Joaquin Ortega of La Union raised the all-important question of personal privilege when he noticed we were being invaded by flies. Somehow, the Batasan survived the fly invasion and eventually became the permanent seat of the House of Representatives after the Batasan. Following the 1986 EDSA "revolution," the Senate was restored under the 1987 Constitution, and after the first senatorial election, it took up its headquarters in the old legislative building on Burgos Street in Manila. It was here where I began to serve as a senator in 1992.But during my second term (1995-2001), the Senate lost its old residence and relocated to a rented wing of the GSIS building in Pasay City. This was a real shame. In the poorest countries I have been to, even in non-democracies, I have never seen anything half as humiliating — a rented office space for their congress or parliament. However poor they were, they always managed to make a showpiece of their parliament or congress. Hungary and Romania are not poor countries, but they have two of the most beautiful parliament buildings in the world. The Palace of Parliaments in Bucharest is said to be the world's second-biggest administrative building next to the Pentagon.Without question, I fully support the decision to relocate the Senate from its rented space at the GSIS building in Pasay City to a dignified place of its own, and I support building it at a fairly decent cost. But I think that putting it at BGC while the House remains at Batasan Hills is a mistake we may not be able to live down. If we are going to be stuck with a bicameral Congress, the two houses should be located close to, if not adjoining, each other for the most sensible reasons in the world. The fact that we have already sunk P23 billion into the BGC project is no reason the present Senate should not rethink everything and consider correcting its appalling [email protected]