A contempt for the public (Part I)

It is the barbarism of mindless profit-seeking, of getting something for almost nothing, of doing brisk business on the despair of others…it is the culture of shabbiness, of neglect, and of perpetual improvisation. It is the absolute contempt for the public.^.1

Every law passed by the 13th Congress of the Philippines cost P148.94 million. Only 84 bills were passed, the lowest turnout in the whole legislative history of the Philippines. To make that sinking feeling in one's stomach more pronounced, only 32 out of those 84 bills were nationally significant, the rest being infrastructure projects for the congressman's district, conversion of municipalities into cities, proclamation of new non-working holidays, franchise grants, and other laws of only local significance.²

The new 14^th Congress produced by the last May elections should give us hope of a better performance than that of the last Congress, whose achievement cannot even be called mediocre but simply, for lack of a suitable politically correct term, horrible. To think that their budget cost the Filipino a pretty penny—12.5 billion pesos. We can only cringe and hope that the new congresspeople are more merciful than their predecessors because at this point, all we can reasonably ask for is mercy. Not intelligence, transparency, accountability, honesty or even civility. Just mercy.

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