Senator Juan Ponce Enrile. INQUIRER PHOTO/RAFFY LERMA
MANILA, Philippines — Former Senator Juan Ponce Enrile is not yet done criticizing the present composition of the Senate.
This time, Enrile, who is seeking a Senate comeback in 2019, finds “something lacking” in the way senators tackle issues of national and international concern.
“In my opinion, there is something lacking in the treatment of issues and problems that are coming up in that forum of the people,” he said in a statement on Saturday.
“Mind you, the House of Representatives and the Senate, in a democracy, are not just making laws. They are the forums where you discuss national issues that impinge on the lives of the people that are governed.”
This is the reason why, he said, voters must look at the experience and expertise of those being elected into the lawmaking body.
“You must have people there who have enough sense, enough experience, enough understanding of the national issues that they are tackling,” Enrile said.
“I’m not saying that [present Senators] don’t have that. Unfortunately, the breadth and the width and depth of their experience are not enough,” he added.
The former senator earlier criticized what he called as the “coffee table” practice of the current Senate.
“Out there in the Senate, where I stayed for 24 years, when I was there, nothing is passed without any debate. Unlike today, they go into a coffee table and they discuss it among themselves and that’s it. That’s not a Senate,” he said in a statement last Tuesday.
READ: Enrile hits ‘coffee table’ legislation in Senate
Enrile reiterated that if elected again in the Senate next year, he would “revitalize” the chamber as a “forum for debate.”
During his first term as senator from 1987-1992, Enrile recalled how the so-called “Magnificent 12” rejected the proposed 1991 “RP-US Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace.”
The said treaty, he said, would have given the United States 10 more years to operate military bases in the Philippines.
“There was only one among 23 other senators who was against it. I was the 2nd one who was against it,” the former senator said.
“Bobby Tañada and I were able to convince 10 others to go along with our position and that is why we knocked out the extension of the military bases of the United States.”
Enrile took pride at how he was able to “handle” the 23 senators, whom he said were composed of “men of experience and learning.”
“And I was able to handle them, 23 of them. I would like to go back to the Senate at this time to do the same thing,” he said.