Whatever the reason is, it is hard to digest that the Senate would time and again, like a wandering Jew, move from one building to another that reflects on the seeming lack of attention it is getting from the Malacañang tenants.The absence of a permanent residence for the Senate, that some call the upper chamber, is the result of an aberration created by the martial law regime during the term of former President Marcos that up to now seems not to have been remedied mainly as a result of the low priority it gets from the Palace which almost always find itself to be at the opposite end with the Senate on most issues.
The more than 200 members of the House of Representatives already have the Batasang Pambansa complex which was originally conceived to be a bicameral building but since a unicameral legislature was created under the 1973 Constitution, the complex provided office spaces for members of the Parliament. The Senate, when it made a comeback under the 1987 Constitution, was left without a home since the Parliament was reverted into the Lower House.
It should have been a necessary rectification for the people as part of reforms instituted by governments that sprang after the People Power uprising to look for a permanent building for the Senate but somehow or some way this was overlooked, if not having been given attention to, and the Senate has been renting from one building to another since then.
The Senate returned to the original legislative building in Manila until the building was turned over to the National Museum of the Philippines during the term of former President Fidel V. Ramos and it has since moved to the GSIS Building in Pasay for which, according to Sen. Franklin Drilon, the Senate pays an atrocious P110 million a year.
Drilon said senators have decided to move to a less expensive place and is now at either the Post Office building or the University of the Philippines (UP) campus in Diliman for the new site of the Senate building.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile had assigned Drilon, Sen. Pia Cayetano and Sen. Ferdinand Marcos to relocate the Senate offices.
The administration of Noynoy should make it a priority to give the Senate a permanent home not only because Noynoy was once part of it but because it is a source of great national humiliation for a portion of its legislative body to be forever searching for a place to settle in.
The amount being paid by the Senate as rent for the moment if taken over the years that they have been paying rent, would have been enough for a more than decent structure that the Senate can call its own.
Renting offices for the country’s senators also does not sound right since they are elected representatives in whom the government has the duty to provide a definite institutional building to be housed.
It is also a disservice to the people who elected the 24 senators to lose track of their representatives literally by reason of their changing addresses.
The past administration, all nine years of it, definitely has an agenda in not finding a permanent solution to the Senate’s permanent housing problem.
Gloria’s term was marked with efforts to change the Constitution to pave the way for the return of a unicameral Congress in which she had aspired to become a prime minister with an indefinite term.
She definitely lacks the compulsion to do anything favoring the Senate but one which Noynoy should not be following her trail.
The Senate is one of the most revered institutions in the land and the public flocks to it whenever people feel that they are not getting a fair shake from people in government.
It needs to be a landmark so people will be able to say with conviction whenever they are confronted with a particular issue “to take it to the Senate.”
It would be a huge letdown for a question to follow that proud statement: “So where at?”
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