THE Kapihan sa Senado has never had it better.
For the first time, the weekly media forum with the Senate press corps last Thursday had two back-to-back guests.
Senate President Franklin Drilon who was his usual frank but more relaxed self was guest in the morning, and Senate Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile in the afternoon, packed with his usual unparalleled astuteness.
The issues were not merely steaming, but scalding. The Senate President first announced the good news about the Senate being able to “recover and regain the people’s trust and confidence despite the controversies that hounded the 16th Congress.”
What made the laptops, cellphones and gadgets of the press people clatter like crazy were the words spewing from the mouths of the Senate’s top guns—from Drilon’s disclosure of his order for the Commission on Appointments to review Enrile’s invocation of Section 20 of the Rules of the Senate which effectively blocked the nomination of seven career officials, to Senator Enrile’s challenge to US Ambassador Philip Goldberg to explain why the US was conducting an operation in the country using Filipino police officers.
“I directed the CA secretariat to conduct a review of Section 20 which allows a member to move for a deferment of an appointment (arbitrarily and) for no reason at all,” Drilon said earlier that day.
He said that he was saddened that the careers of the officials were derailed.
In his reply that afternoon, Enrile believed that the next President who will be elected “should be given the power to elect those ambassadors that will represent him as his plenipotentiaries.”
In the case of the constitutional offices, he said that the auditor who is the guardian of the public funds should be elected by the next president in order to check the misdoings of this administration.
Enrile was also asked to react to US Ambassador Philip Goldberg’s jab at the Senate toward Mamasapano who said it is irresponsible to discuss sensitive national security issues publicly, and that these should be discussed in executive sessions for accountability’s sake as enemies of the state might also be watching.
“What is sensitive about a police operation?
“I ask the great ambassador, the proconsul of America here.
“Who are the enemies of the state in this country?
“Is he talking about America or talking about this country?
We are the host country for him. Why should he talk as if this is the United States?” Enrile asked. BEEN THERE DONE/JOSEPHINE JARON-CODILLA
