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By Francisco S. Tatad
The fielding of Aquilino
“Koko” Pimentel III and Alan Peter Cayetano as senatorial
candidates only means that the “Genuine Opposition” does not
mind creating dynasties in our exceptionally small Senate, in
violation of the Constitution and the rules of decency and fairness.
This is said.
“Koko” is
the son of Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr.
and routinely mistaken by many for his father, and Alan is the
brother of Sen. Pia Cayetano, from whom we have not heard much. Both
Nene and Pia will be in the Senate until 2010. Should the duo win,
the Pimentels will have a larger presence in the Senate than the
whole of Muslim Mindanao, and the Cayetanos will claim a privilege
denied to all those who had ever sat there, not to mention the 18
million families that make up the 90-million Filipino population.
To our
standing objection, the candidates have replied, “there is no law
against it.” This nonbiodegradable nonsense has since been made
the stuff of their sloganeering. Some candidates have repeated it,
without realizing that in so doing, they were putting themselves in
the same position as the dynasty candidates.
The
Cayetano-Pimentel position is immoral, unconstitutional, and
extremely bad taste. It cannot be made the staring point of a
respectable senatorial career. Good taste alone should have deterred
them, but it is not just a question of good taste. It is a question
of law—moral law and constitutional law.
Article 2,
Section 28 of the Constitution provides: “The State shall
guarantees equal access to opportunities for public service and
prohibit political dynasties as may be denied by law.” For those
who have no desire to play games with the law, there is more than
enough law in this provision. But to those who want to put their
personal interests above everything else, there will never be enough
law even if an enabling law existed.
It is
retrograde and perverse for anyone who wants to sit in the Senate to
argue that since there is no enabling law, what the Constitution
says should be ignored. A trial lawyer might be forgiven such
statement, but not someone who wants to write the nation’s laws.
The absence of
a law does not justify behavior that would be surely prohibited, if
the law existed. Laws are enacted so that, even without law, the
people will conduct themse4lves in such a manner as though there was
a law that prescribed it. St. Paul’s letter to the Romans
(2:15-15) says: “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature
what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though
they do not have the law. They show that what the law require is
written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witnesses
. . .”
Far from
diminishing the constitutional mandate, therefore, the failure of
Congress to enact the enabling law only sharpens the obligation of
those who sit or want to sit in Congress to respect that mandate,
rather than exploit the absence of an enabling law for their own
personal advantage.
Adjective law
fines what is justiciable, but the idea of what is right and what is
wrong always precedes any enactment. The good of society can only be
secured by men and women who will act not only according to what is
written in statute but above all according to what is written upon
their hearts. Otherwise, our politics will remain no better than a
biasty often until even for bias.
These
candidates take us for morons when they suggest—for this is what
they do—that they want to become senators so they could write the
law that would in future prohibit people like themselves from
becoming senators.
So much has
been said about the candidates’ supposed intelligence. If true,
that can never be concealed. But moral character defines a man much
more than any display of intelligence. A man of intelligence will
know the difference between right and wrong, but it takes a man of
character to say no to something apparently desirable but morally
wrong. An intelligent man without character has nothing to say to
anybody, least of all to the nation.
One who
aspires to sit in the Senate must first be a man of character,
whatever his level of intelligence. He should be able to argue
against his self-interest and his appetite for power, pleasure or
personal aggrandizement. He must be able to control his conscience,
especially if he is truly intelligent.
Because GO
failed to do its duty, the dynasty candidates now say, “let the
people decide.” Of course, if the process is clean, the people
will decide. But one who really wants to serve the people must only
propose to them that which is morally desirable. He must not propose
anything immoral in the hope that the people are ignorant enough or
angry enough not to know or to care about the difference. Demagogues
and charlatans do this, but not men of real worth and substance.
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