Transcript of Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago’s interview
11 December 2007
On the revival of the Cha-Cha in the Lower House
Theirs is no point resurrecting the dead. Why try and revive it? What is the reason for changing the Constitution at this particular time? Here in the Senate, we are all engaged in trying to pass the national budget this afternoon or at least this week. And in the Powercom, we have a series of scandals. In fact, as Chair of the JCPC, I am getting terminal headaches from all these scandals: the sale of the EDC shares of stock rather than just its geothermal fields packaged with steam sales agreement; the sale of Transco, which have been attacked by certain opposition senators because of the alleged conflict of interest with the PSALM president; and, most recently, the privilege speech of a congressman alleging that NAPOCOR has paid for coal that was grossly overcharged, and that overpayment will of course be reflected in next year’s electricity rates.
I want to know the following things about charter change:
- Is there a necessity?
- What are the benefits to be gained from it?
- How practical is the proposal?
What maybe the motives behind this?
I don’t really know, except maybe if the House of Representatives just wants to prove to President Arroyo, since her recent altercation with the leadership of the House, that it still has some weight and cannot just be kicked around by the executive branch of government. There is always two countervailing forces that the House can fall back on whenever it feels that they are not getting their due: 1) the power to impeach, and 2) the power to initiate charter change.
This is all part of the power game, which is really very annoying and very tiring. We have so many priority bills. This morning at the LEDAC, we couldn’t even decide among ourselves which four or six bills to pass before Christmas break, and which fourteen or fifteen bills to pass before the first semester. And then we have all these extraneous political noise going on.
On the composition of the Ethics Committee as principal obstacle from hearing the resolution to suspend or expel Sen. Trillanes
Apparently, the committee has not yet been organized. This is perfectly understandable because no senator wants to sit in judgment over his or her own colleague. Nobody wants to be chair of the Ethics Committee and nobody wants to be a member. That’s the problem: nobody wants to pass judgment, because if you don’t judge anything, then you don’t get into trouble over anything. My contention is that we have a power granted to the Senate not only by the Rules of the Senate but by the Constitution itself. And we cannot simply abnegate this power simply by non-action. Our inaction or our silence, as provided by the Civil Code and in the Penal Code, will be interpreted as consent. In love, sex, the Civil Code, the Penal Code, and the actions of the Senate, silence means consent.
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