Shutting down the madhouse

The Senate blue ribbon committee affair must have alarmed such a number of people that wherever I have gone these days, one question kept coming up--isn’t it time to abolish the Senate? Many seem to feel the inmates are now running the madhouse, and the only thing to do is to shut it down. I have had to answer, the question is not whether it’s time, but how?

I take no comfort in it at all. I used to be a proud member of the Senate. In 1992, after ten years in the Cabinet, six years in the Batasan, and so many years in journalism, I landed in the Senate. This was long before the august body got embroiled in bribery, grand theft and the uncontrolled grandstanding of its most freewheeling members.