A crumbling chamber

It’s bad enough that our current crop of senators includes ex-convicts, bad actors and four sets of siblings, but we also have to deal with the reality that some of them are behaving like bullies, goons and trapos.

- IRIS GONZALES

It’s bad enough that our current crop of senators includes ex-convicts, bad actors and four sets of siblings, but we also have to deal with the reality that some of them are behaving like bullies, goons and trapos.

The once esteemed institution has spiraled downwards into the depths of despair. The result is a chamber that has crumbled because of self-preservation, finger-pointing and, as writer Gian Lao jested following ex-Senate president Chiz Escudero’s privilege speech, “parmesan politics.”

Obviously, our lawmakers don’t want the investigations on the flood control scandal, which has so far implicated some senators, to go any further. Instead of thinking of the country, their battlecry is “save ourselves,” audaciously under the pretense of saving the institution.

Little do they realize - or care — that the only way they can save the Senate is precisely to push for the investigation, whoever may be involved.

Senator Ping Lacson’s resignation is telling because obviously, with his short but explosive stint as chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee, the panel’s inquiries have unmasked key players in this grand thievery — lawmakers they may be.

The senators are afraid that the truth will come out with Lacson at the helm of the powerful committee tasked with investigating malfeasance in the different branches of government. Obviously, with Lacson at the committee, none of them feels “safe.” Days ago, stories of Lacson’s involvement in high-profile cases such as the Dacer-Corbito murder case and the Kuratong Baleleng criminal syndicate resurfaced on YouTube.