JPE’s resignation

By DUCKY PAREDES
MALAYA

‘Must all these issues of propriety, transparency and accountability be forgotten?’

With just two days left in the calendar for the 15th Congress, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile resigned the Senate Presidency “as a matter of personal honor and dignity.

“Old age may have physically impaired my vision. But let me assure all of you, I can still see and read clearly the handwriting on the wall. I need not be told by anyone when it is time for me to go.”

Apparently, the fact that his son, Congressman Jack Enrile, lost in his bid for election as a Senator weighed heavily on the father: “The common analysis of political observers was that my son’s candidacy suffered from the fallout of the bitter criticisms and accusations hurled against me by some people in this chamber who I had displeased, just as we were entering the political campaign season.

“As a father, I endured in silence the pain of seeing my son suffer because of me. He carried on his shoulders the weight of all the mud thrown against me. As I stayed and watched quietly by the sidelines, my heart bled for him.”

Actually, it was quite a show when our “honorable” senators began fighting over money before the election season. It turned the Senate into something else.

Said Enrile: “After all that howl and rage, I now ask: Must all these issues of propriety, transparency and accountability be forgotten? Have all these issues suddenly become irrelevant? Can we just move on. as they say, and just bury these issues in the dustbin of the Philippine Senate’s history? My answer is no.

“No, the Senate neither begins nor ends with Juan Ponce Enrile. This chamber has its own honor to uphold, and its institutional integrity in the end means more to the people than all of us combined.”

Enrile said he wanted nothing else but to vindicate his “sullied name.”

“I refuse to be anyone’s scapegoat and everyone’s whipping boy. I refuse to let any senator drag my name down the gutter with her. I refuse to stand idly by when no less than the son of my former partner, the late Senator Renato L. Cayetano, would dare accuse me of being a thief or a scoundrel.

“I refuse to lend my hard-earned name as a convenient refuge to those who cannot face the public and defend their own honor. I refuse to allow anybody, whether in or outside the halls of this chamber, to just freely trample upon the name that my late father, Alfonso Ponce Enrile, had so kindly allowed me to carry with pride.

“Let us all be men and women worthy of being called ‘honorable senators.’ And let the chips fall where they may. “

***

If Enrile succeeds in getting the Senate to agree to an audit of their PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Funds) and other allowances that amount to billions during a senator’s term, this will be a great victory for transparency in governance.

In truth, giving funds to legislators (whether congressmen or senators) is bad practice; making these funds exempt from audit automatically makes those funds a temptation for outright thievery.

We, the voters, want that audit and a stop to giving our legislators funds.

As Senate President, Enrile always said that he could account for every centavo that his office disbursed. Can the individual senators do the same?

According to their present practice, what senators and congressmen need to do is only to state that the funds assigned were used for the purpose for which they were allocated.

How difficult is that? No receipts; no other submissions!

A senadora says, “Ang sarap maging senador.”

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With his irrevocable resignation as Senate President, Enrile may have shown the only way that the Senate can recapture its old glory.

Today’s Senate is no different from the rest of government. The practice of giving our senators funds indiscriminately has made every senator a crook.

We need a thorough and impartial audit of Senate and congressional funds which are, after all, taxpayers’ money.

Enrile himself is not afraid of any audit of his performance at the helm of the Senate. How many senators are willing to submit themselves to close scrutiny by the public to whom they owe their mandate?

A COA audit will reveal precisely where every peso went. And there should be no exemption: all senators should gladly open up their books if they have nothing to hide. But will all of them survive a COA audit?

One senator is facing not one but two counts of graft — for the acquisition of a $700,000 condo unit in Park Avenue in Manhattan, New York City and for the acquisition of a mansion worth no less than P200 million in Forbes Park.

Another senator was accused of using Senate funds to pay the salaries of her household help and to rent a building, which she herself owns for use as a satellite office.

Those with something to hide would no doubt try to keep government auditors at bay and prevent a transparent audit as this would expose their flagrant injudicious and flagrant misuse of funds.

Who’s deathly afraid of an impartial COA audit of Senate funds? Not JPE.

As he asked in is resignation speech: “Must all these issues of propriety, transparency and accountability be forgotten?”

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