Manny Pacquiao’s win against Antonio Margarito once more invites world attention to a Filipino in particular and the Philippines as his country of origin. While most Filipinos are still relishing Pacman’s recent victory, foreigners whose attention is advertently invited into the Philippine situation will find out that there are a string of high profile cases that are yet to be resolved.
Foremost of these cases are the Maguindanao Massacre, the Supreme Court being besieged of attacks relative to the Del Castillo plagiarism affair, the unresolved NBN-ZTE deal, the Jocjoc Bolante fertilizer fund scam, the case of Senator Panfilo Lacson who absconded in order to evade eventual arrest to answer for murder charges, the recent incident resulting to the death of taxonomist-scientist Leonardo Co who was allegedly caught in the crossfire between government forces and the New People’s Army while doing scientific research in the mountains of Kananga, Leyte, the pending case of impeachment against Ombudsman Merceditas Guittierez, graft charges against former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and on top of these, cases of victims of disappearances, and a litany of other pending cases and debacles that could not be contained in this piece.
What the Filipinos, in general, and the Philippine Congress, in particular, failed to see is Manny Pacquiao’s dereliction of duty to attend to regular sessions and official functions as congressional representative from Sarangani Province. He had been absent from those sessions from the time he went into full preparation for his fight with Margarito until after he won that fight. Moonlighting or pursuing a private profession while in government service and using official time and resources for one’s personal gain is definitely unethical if not against the Code of Conduct of government officials. In Manny Pacquiao we have a model where a Congressional Representative of the Philippines is seen by the world fighting in a professional match while being away officially from the legislature.
The mediocrity of the rest of the legislative members, as well as that of the Chief Executive, to take action on the blatant absenteeism is a tacit admission of the flawed presumption that Congressmen are exempted from the rules of attendance to work, or that boxing has a much higher level of priority compared to concerns for enacting laws and legislative inquiries--- or that other personal alibi could be a viable reason to be absent from the hallowed halls of Congress, or that no agency or authority has the prerogative to censure the likes of Pacquiao, even if he does another boxing match in the near future.
The public in general has been led to believe that things are going regularly. It is, for instance, not extraordinary to have a boxer as a Congressman, to have a movie actor as a legislator, to have a congressional representative as anchorman in a primetime television show, or a Senator or Governor endorsing a commercial product, or to see the likes of Senator Bong Revilla running a television program. All of these, taken together, lend further credence to impressions in the public mind that the legislative work is easy, that sometimes it could even be unnecessary, and, yet, really, very rewarding. These are the subtle impressions that get embedded in the Filipino psyche and culture which are sooner or later manifested in the way government is run in the Philippines.
No comments:
Post a Comment