I watch with puzzlement why senators are zeroing in on the citizenship issue of elected Bamban Mayor Alice Guo, instead of why a Constitutional body like the Commission on Election allowed her to run and be voted even if she did not present any legal papers. The Constitution provides only bonafide Filipino citizens to run and be elected.
The way they are conducting the probe on her birth certificate and those of her supposed parents is like a circus– except for Sen. Grace Poe whose questions are relevant although limited to citizenship– with other senators even showing their maniacal desires for the rich lady, whose wealth is even questionable in itself.
What are the senators afraid of in investigating the poll body about this technicality? Are they afraid that the entire 2026 elections could be affected by the outcome of their probe? That something bigger than Guo might be discovered along the way. Is pursuing how Guo got elected going to link to the control of Chinese tech mafia and their trollers in making a fraud of the 2026 elections, all the way up? Is she truly a Chinese spy– I doubt it because she is too high profile and spies normally live hidden and humble lives, as much as possible they should only blend, not stand up, in their present environment.
Funny, at first none of them wanted to investigate her. But after the interview by Karen Davila, all of sudden they were all interested to pose a question or two– as if to make known their presence and that they are working while on duty. After all, the Filipino citizens, through taxes, pay for their huge salaries, allowances, pork barrel, their travel expenses and other sums of money– as well as of their overpaid staff, many of whom are their own relatives, neighbors and friends.
These senators want the people to know that they deserve another term in office by making themselves visible in the public eye.Grandstanders.
The more basic question other than citizenship is how someone like Alice Guo– who is neither here nor there and who professes to grow up in the farm (therefore her farmhands are the ones who voted her into office)-- is being linked to criminal syndicates of Singapore and whose very support to the POGOs could maintain high living and the luxuries of a helicopter (taxi as it ferries her wherever she wants to go) and not a Lombardi car deserve to continue being in office just because of her abundant funds.
If even the Philippine Statistics Authority– the agency that collects all our birth, marriage (or no marriage), status, and death certificates– had said that they do not have Guo’s parents birth certificates and that Guo’s registry of birth came 7 (or is it 17) years after she was born, then we must move on to more basic questions like her political and public life.
What is happening now in the senate is that the senators themselves are making a satire of their very existence and that of their institution by asking so many stupid questions, undeserving of the monies we pay them.
I am now reminded of how then Senator Leila de Lima was demonized by the lower house (which caused her six or more years of incarceration) and her personal life (including her alleged love affair with her driver) was developed into a zarzuela to humor the masses and divert their attention to the impunity of the drug war and other abuses during the time of Duterte.
This is the same path that the senate is going to– another zarzuela to deviate us from our problems of high cost of living, high inflation, growing discontent, rising poverty, the health and learning crises, the charter change and the mode by which such amendments to the Constitution would be done. Everything is a diversionary tactic.
Only last week we all witnessed the coup drama in the senate, which was hatched and implemented by one man and his large political ambition (despite the ‘obedience and subservience’ of the former senate president to their every whims and caprices) to which the other members except those loyal to the former senate leadership were herded to vote for (perhaps because of more promises of political clout, chairmanships and other remuneration). At least that drama did not take long to implement and caught the viewers by surprise of its haste.
So what other dramas would we expect from the senate from hereon? Abangan.
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