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LAST Thursday, June 21, the Senate secretariat invited the new
senators and their senior staff members to a briefing on the Senate
services available to them. The invitation sent to the new senators
said the briefing is meant to “provide the present organizational
structure and composition of the Senate, as well as the roles and
functions of all offices under the Senate secretariat.”
Only Chiz Escudero and Noynoy
Aquino were able to attend. Alan Peter Cayetano sent his chief of
staff and Sonny Trillanes had his own private briefing at his
detention facility in Fort Bonifacio yesterday. The rest of the
newly elected senators—Loren Legarda, Ping Lacson, Ed Angara,
Gringo Honasan, Manny Villar, Joker Arroyo and Francis Pangilinan—found
no need to attend, perhaps because they do not deem themselves as
wet-behind-the-ears senators.
I talked to a reporter friend who
covered the briefing and he described it as boring from a news
standpoint because none of the juicy issues were discussed, like the
senators’ pork barrel allocations, for instance, or the real
dynamics of conflict and cooperation within the upper chamber. Well,
I asked him, did he actually expect these things to be discussed
with the media around? The pork barrel allocations—how to go about
sourcing and allocating them, how much is it actually worth, and
under what various names—would probably be discussed in a separate
and very private briefing, certainly away from the media. So much
for transparency, right?
Anyway, it’s nice for the
Senate secretariat to give a briefing to try to teach the new
senators and their staff the rules of the road. Like I told my
reporter friend, a good deal of the discussion that goes on in these
formal briefings is about procedure, not politics, which is best
learned (or maybe best not learned) from old hands anyway. In the
really important things, the new senators have to learn the ropes
for themselves.
It would have been better if the
veterans of the Senate showed up to give the newbies some advice,
some bits of wisdom they wouldn’t hear from any formal
orientation. I reckon outgoing senators like Johnny Flavier and
Ramon Magsaysay should have more interesting things to say as they
would soon be out of office and could therefore speak more freely.
Having served in three Congresses
(twice as senator and once as congressman) please bear with me as I
offer my two cents’ worth—wisdom from experience and from other
senators’ experience over the years. I hope these serve the new
faces in the Senate well.
Watch your back. The late Senate
President Neptali Gonzales, in his valedictory speech, told his
successor, Ed Angara, in 1992, “Watch your back, Ed.” He said
your friend and ally today could just as easily stab you in the back
tomorrow. “Tatarakan ka ng balaraw” were his actual (certainly
more colorful) words. So keep your backs to the wall and watch out
for your enemies, but more for your friends.
Watch your weight. You get
invited to a lot of functions when you’re a senator and in the
Philippines it is bad manners not to eat when you’re attending
them. Expect to gain at least 20 pounds before the first session (of
the new Senate) adjourns in October. Unless, of course, you watch
what you eat and work out like Pia Cayetano.
Make time for your family. It’s
easy to get lost in the demands of the job, at least if you take
your being senator seriously. You lose precious time with your
family that you could never get back. I myself have regrets over
this because I had to work in the Senate in the Old Congress
Building in Manila, far away from my family in Cebu. So schedule
family time in your official daily itinerary if you could. Keep your
regrets to a minimum. And while we are at it, schedule private time
as well, when you could just sit unseen and relax and just ponder by
yourself. I tell you, you will need it.
Remember what you are there for.
You have your constituencies, your advocacies, and you won because
of them. So work for them and keep listening to the people who voted
for you.
(To be continued)
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