THE CITIZEN ON MARS

It seems nowadays that the political scene has become a children’s playground full of tots running around, playing hide-and-seek and then, when tantrums bowls over, getting at each other’s throat or armpit.

For one, I have never seen Joker Arroyo so blatantly frank and candid as he rebuked President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to “…not teach us manners because we’re well-mannered. It’s the executive that is not well-mannered.” Now that is closest to street language a senator of this country could ever get. But who could blame the fierce senator—he with the inquisitiveness of a Greek philosopher and whose tongue can be virulent to point of bile. Apparently, Senator Arroyo reacted to what could be the sharpest rebuke of the Senate by GMA, saying that senators have “the propensity to pursue investigation ‘in aid of destabilization’”.

The fiery exchanges between Malacañang and the lawmakers may just find truce as GMA now backpedals and softens the teeth of Executive Order 464, a presidential directive that prohibits cabinet secretaries from attending senate or congressional hearings without prior approval from the President herself. The EO was recently invoked by Malacañang to gagged cabinet secretaries attending budget hearings and this has turned the whole thing into a bursting cauldron of fire, with Senators threatening to allocate 1 Peso budget to all agencies whose head officials fail to attend the budget hearings. The President started to recall the presence of her cabinet secretaries when the budget hearings had began to touch and query on non-budget matters such as on the issue of who amongst the cabinet secretaries or officers have aided in hiding Virgilio Garcilliano when he disappeared for a very long period of time last year. The whole thing seems to appear very funny and ludicrous—surreal even—when budget hearings could turn out into an extended Garcilliano inquiry. This makes me laugh inside imagining somehow how our senators are itching and dying to resurrect the whole Garci issue and castigate those who were involved in the now famous Garci caper. ( The issue on Garci has reach such legendary proportion that I think, a movie about his life should be in the offing by now.)

Now, the Supreme Court is set to tackle the constitutionality of EO 464 — in a week’s time—- and this may be the main reason why Malacañang is softening its stance on its application. In my mind, the said EO basically runs counter to Section 28, Article II of the constitution, which provides:

“Subject to reasonable conditions prescribed by law, the State adopts and implements a policy of full public disclosure of all its transactions involving public interest.”

Yet there is that qualification of “subject to reasonable conditions prescribed by law” and Malacañang may just get away unscathed because of this. But if you ask me, EO 464 is so improper and a very strange edict that doesn’t belong in a democratic system like us, where the right by the public to information concerning all official transactions should always be permitted or favored upon; except when extreme danger to public interest or public order is attendant.