Mabini's idea of a senate.pdf

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extracted text: ■ A different sort of senate was suggested by a Fili pino leader of past days before the Filipino peo ple have had any experience in self-government. MABINI'S IDEA OF A SENATE If President Marcos is cor rect in his campaign belief that we can be “great again” — a piece of rhetoric which, incidentally, he has never ex plained satisfactorily — we should probably look back to the time when we were first great. And that can only be when Filipinos had cour age and patriotism and self sacrifice to spare, (for that is the only greatness that counts) the time of the Phil ippine Revolution and the Philippine-American War and the decades immediately pre ceding and following them. This year’s senatorial elec tions make a good jumpingoff point for this kind of perspective. What was the 1898 view of a Philippine Senate? In the “Constitu tional Program” drafted by Mabini for the First Philip pine Republic there looms a characteristic virtuous and intellectual mood that seems, in retrospect, passionately a political and contemptuous of most of the values that we now hold to be important. At the same time, it is, oddly enough, not without some similarities to our own view of the exalted position of the Senate, that institution being one of the few which we have managed to keep fairly intact. To begin with, one must remember that Mabini’s con stitution was largely original, almost completely underived and uninfluenced by Ameri can, British and French do cuments, and in that sense, indigenous and very much rooted in his times. It was a democratic breakthrough, for an ex-colony, its popu lism diluted only by the exigencies of the existing state of war. It was also an exposition of aristocracy: ta lent, “honest work” and pa triotic service counted more 20 Panorama than all other considerations. It was meant to instruct as well as reflect and was, per haps deliberately, more hightoned than many of the peo ple it sought to encompass. Mabini called the Senate "un cuerpo respetabilisimo”, a superlative body, to be composed of persons who had “distinguished themselves by their honesty and their vast knowledge’ of art, science and industry and had become the elite of society, not by wealth or by position, but by “talent joined with honest work.” The age requirement was 30 (a point in favor of Gov ernor Aquino of Tarlac who, depending on how you look at it, was born either a few days or 69 years too late). Another requirement was “a fixed income which will en sure a decorous and indepen dent life” (without the need of congressional allowances?). An important after-thought in the same article does away with the specifications in the preceding paragraph: all of them were to be outweighed by the fact of “having ren dered great services to the people.” Generals and admirals in active service would automa tically be senators. So would “the erector of the central university” (the equivalent of the president of the Uni versity of the Philippines) and of the other ‘academies,’ as the heads of unions com posed of professionals (Ma bini called them sindicatos, a term which may have been derived from the French syn dic at, and, in that case, trade unions). An encouragement for Secretary of Labor Espi nosa? The “directors of wel fare agencies that are under the immediate supervision of the central government” (still a good breeding ground for the Senate as the SWA has shown) would also merit seats in the first Philippine Sen ate. Industry and commerce, as in our time, would provide a few more senators. These business organizations, spe cially those devoted to rail ways and other means of communications (nothing new in the idea of infra structure, after all?) were to be allowed to choose one member of the Senate “from their midst.” The other sen ators were to be chosen by September 1967 21 “electors appointed by fa culties from colleges” (A point in favor of Miss He lena Benitez) by electors from business and industrial firms who paid the most taxes and by the top tax payers themselves. The emphasis on taxpay ing and "contributores” who were to elect Congress and the Senate in a classic elec toral system that recalls an cient Greece or Switzerland and is worlds removed from the banal, small-minded at mosphere of our time was probably Mabini’s tribute to the American dictum of “No taxation without representa tion.” The senators of that time were merely to advise Con gress and “the central gov ernment” so that “the actions of both may be accompanied by right and justice” — a real council of elders. They were “to propose to the Pres ident the establishment of re forms and of adequate im provements," always giving the advantage to "talent and inventiveness” but their deci sions were not to bind the President in any manner, ex cept in the sense that "three decisions made at different times on the same matter” would oblige him to submit them to Congress, “in order that this body may decide whether they are to have the force of law.” Where is the purity of yes teryear? But wishful think ing can lead only to the fatal compromises with which, this year, we are all faced. Greatness must indeed be reac quired. — By Carmen Guer rero Nakpil. 22‘ Panorama
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