IT’S QUITE uncanny that someone convicted of child abuse, as in the case of ACT party-list’s Rep. France Castro, has the temerity to strut around Congress displaying a holier-than-thou attitude as if she’s the epitome of a good representative of the people.
What’s more unsettling is that she is allowed and protected by the House of Representatives led by Speaker Martin Romualdez to continue serving. Aren’t convicted public officials supposed to be dismissed from government service and perpetually disqualified from holding public office?
It is because of this special treatment and their ulterior motives that prompted the call to purge the party-list from Congress. And it is timely as the midterm elections are just around the corner – or more appropriately, the circus is in town with the usual singing and dancing clowns.
We’re not saying we remove some people in Congress, shot them in the back and bury them in shallow graves in the hinterlands. The “purge” here is just a figure of speech, but we do want some groups removed from the party-list system.
The party-list system intension is noble. It aims to give representation in Congress to marginalized groups so their representatives can craft laws benefiting marginalized sectors.
Unfortunately, some groups use the party-lists system to get into Congress and use government resources to undermine the government. It is also public knowledge that some party-list groups are head-over-heels in love with the CPP/NPA/NDF that is hell-bent on overthrowing the government by armed insurgency.
These party-list groups in Congress fancy themselves the Makabayan Bloc but are aptly called KABAG – an acronym for Kabataan, Anakpawis, Bayan Muna, Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), and Gabriela.
Fortunately for us, from six seats in the 18th Congress this Makabayan/KABAG was reduced to just three seats in the current 19th Congress.
Thanks largely to the Filipino people finally seeing through the lies and propaganda of the Left and the Barangay Development Program and the Whole of Nation approach of the NTF-ELCAC.
There’s Senate Bill (SB) 201, filed by Sen. Ronald Dela Rosa which aims to amend the Party-List Act to prohibit party-lists linked with terrorist organizations from joining the legislature.
Further, the poll body may choose to disqualify if the party-list group “directly or indirectly participates in acts detrimental to the best interest of the government, to overthrow the government or diminish its powers, or to be associated by any means to rebels or proscribed terrorist persons or groups under Republic Act No. 11479” or the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020.
If Senate Bill 201 becomes law we will finally be seeing an end to these opportunists in Congress who use government resources to undermine the government.
Moving on, the party-list system is no longer an avenue for reform; it has become a corrupted system, also hijacked by the political elite instead of uplifting the marginalized. It has become another tool of the political elite’s greed. This includes so-called cause-oriented groups which often present themselves as advocates for the marginalized but are now extensions of established political interest.
Meanwhile, the death of all top CPP/NPA/NDF leaders is the final straw in their demise. They’re now running around like headless chickens. With their ideology no longer able to sustain them, they turned to banditry.
Meaning, this election thingy is a last-ditch desperate move to resurrect the dying insurgency by reviving or reorganizing new guerilla fronts in the guise of campaigning/organizing supporters for the coming elections, including raising funds ostensibly for election purposes.
Come to think of it, the remnants seem to have abandoned “red-tagging” and allied themselves with the “trapos” in Congress and are now behaving as “trapos”. I suppose being part of the “ayuda” bloc and partaking of the fat in the pork barrels are too tempting to ignore.
Indeed, the epitome of greed and hypocrisy./PN
