Here and There
City’s promising baby, PYO in debut finally?
By Gerry Garcia
THE call for dismantlement of the Senate, although now an increasingly growing common concern, comes not directly from the people but from amazingly, the lawmakers themselves — mostly congressmen and a smattering of level-headed Senators. Leading this move is the Speaker of the House Joe de Venecia, himself, who appeared deadset when he said the Senate must go. “This system cannot continue: we have to break it.”
At the opening of the Second Congress in July last year de Venecia expressed frustration over “the failure of the Senate to act on more than 820 pending bills, practically 90% of which are of local importance which may be totally unimportant to our senators, but of inestimable value to our local constituencies, to the provinces, cities towns and villages.” These, in the eyes of Speaker JDV, are part of the incontrovertible proof of the Senate’s utter futility and wastefulness.” We have to dismantle it.”
But in the eyes of all his reform-minded followers and constituencies, the best of all was his unwavering resolve to usher in the mother of all reforms, the historically and politically compelling shift to a unicameral parliamentary and federal system of government which, “regrettably”, he said, “found little sympathy in the Senate.”
But what probably gets the Speaker’s goat and that of PGMA’s is the Opposition’s still unclear reason for putting its foot down on the anti-terrorism bill which, they fear, might be used against them.
To this, the police and the military, adamant to violence in any form, have no choice but to pounce on militants and party-listers gathering together in apparently terroristic rally against Administration.
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Meantime our anticipation for a friendlier and less threatening event on Sept. 23, at the old St. John Cathedral has kept us hoping for something the Center for Performing Arts promised: an evening of classical music featuring the country’s leading classical performers.
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