“If this drama does not end, all of us would lose.”
“If this drama does not end, all of us would lose.”
President Rodrigo Duterte and the Senate — particularly Senator Richard Gordon who chairs the Blue Ribbon Committee — are still at it.
Senator Gordon, during his Senate committee hearings, and the President, during his weekly address to the nation. The temperature is getting hotter that it’s about time both gentlemen cooled down and declared a ceasefire. This is before the rhetoric gets out of hand and something untoward happens.
Unfortunately, no one wants to be the first one to initiate the ceasefire. The Senate can certainly go about its business of investigating alleged corruption but tone down the commentaries until the investigation is over and a committee report is published. Perhaps, the daily press interviews can wait until all the invited resource persons have given their statements. The senators can also try to avoid being baited by journalists with their leading and sometimes provocative questions so as not to inflame further the situation. That way, accusations of politicking can be avoided.
The President, on the other hand, can also consider not using his weekly address to defend his friends and attack Senator Gordon and the Senate. Maybe, he can call a separate press conference for that purpose. This way this tussle would be issue-based, nothing personal.
We know that the elections are now upon us and with that, the usual verbal fireworks are expected. But hopefully, everyone can keep to the issues and avoid insulting and offensive personal remarks. Corruption in government is certainly a very important issue but this can be debated without all the accusations flying all over the place. After all, only our judicial courts can decide who is guilty and who is not.
Right now, since no one has been charged, everyone is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. What is happening instead is that both sides are competing in the court of public opinion trying to convince the public that one side is right. But this is not the best way to determine who is right and who is wrong. Navigating a delicate issue like corruption is difficult enough and if not handled properly might just backfire on both sides. If public approval is what both sides are fighting for, why don’t the pollsters just conduct a survey and ask the public who is right? That way, we do not have to wait for nine months until the election to find out.
The debate, if it is that, is one of the strangest that I have witnessed. The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee is investigating Pharmally Pharma-ceuticals accusing it of being a fly-by-night corporation bilking the government of billions of pesos. The President however, is saying that the purchases had to be made because of the exigency of the situation. People were dying and the government had to act regardless of regulations because the country is in an emergency situation.
One side is obviously not getting the whole point of the exercise. All the more reason that there should be a ceasefire to cool things down.
It is hard to say what the public is thinking right now. Because of the heat being generated, this might be the right time for another survey to ask which side the people believe. What seems inexplicable is the way the President has defended Michael Yang, his Chinese friend. We of course know that about him — a friend is a friend. He goes to great lengths to defend friends even if it hurts him politically. This is certainly true by the way he defended Health Secretary Francisco Duque which may have caused his approval rating to go down last June.
With this ongoing drama, we still do not know the effect until the next survey is done. Senate committee hearings have a tendency of becoming a circus. For this reason, perhaps the President should have pulled his punches but as we can all see, that is not his style. He is an unconventional politician. With the array of political forces almost complete, this tussle will surely continue into the campaign especially if Senator Gordon will be a candidate for President.
At a time when social media reigns supreme, silence can be golden. But this is apparently one commodity lacking these days. Everyone wants to be heard. No one wants to follow the prescient advice of the late Senator Manuel Manahan when he said that “more talk, more mistakes; less talk, less mistakes.”
Let us all hope that this drama ends on a positive note. Because if it does not, no one wins. Not the President or Senator Gordon. Only the country loses. Our country whose reputation is currently already not impressive will almost certainly deteriorate further.
