Category: sotto

Senate president wanna-be

May 14, just two days after elections, Senator-elect Tito Sotto was quick to say YES, he would accept the Senate presidency in the 20th congress if enough of his colleagues support him.  https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/

May 15, Senate Prez Chiz Escudero had this to say to a titillated and makulit media.

“Katatapos lang ng eleksyon at bangayan at ingay, sisimulan nyo na naman agad. Palipasin nyo naman. Tapusin muna natin itong kongresong to. May dalawa pa kaming linggo na marami pa kaming inaasahang mapapasa at maihahabol na mga panukalang batas,” Escudero said. “Doon muna kami nakatutok at hindi yung parating na kongreso,” he added. https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/

Oo nga naman. Medyo nagulat din ako kay senator-elect Sotto, na hindi nagpatumpik-tumpik, oo agad. Puwede namang sabihing, too soon, guys, too soon to talk about that, let the 19th Congress wind up first. Like, you know, a show of delikadeza naman, in deference to SP Chiz who has a tricky 12 days to navigate, especially the impeachment part.

Unless yung impeachment mismo  ang top-of-mind ng senator-elect, na para bagang nagpaparamdam na he would handle it differently, otherwise why would he be so eager to replace Chiz? I couldn’t help wondering what game he’s playing.

Finally, some 10 days later, around May 23, my YouTube algo came up with an Iglesia (ni Cristo) Net25 vlog where Tito explains to Ali Sotto and Pat-P Daza exactly where he’s coming from on the impeachment matter. https://www.youtube.com/

SOTTO: Ako, ibang klaseng problema ang nakikita ko  na hindi nasisilip ng iba. Meron dalawang comflicting rules e. … Ang impeachment rules kasi, sinasabi that once the impeachment is taken up or the impeachment court is constituted as one, then kailangan tapusin … the impeachment trial must [go on] to the end.  Ito namang senate rules … ang sinasabi ng constitution … oras na mag-adjourn sine die ang senado, lahat ng business noon, patay, kaya nga…sine die, Latin for “without day”. Wala na.

So ano ang dapat sundin? Impeachment rules ba?  Ang problema, impeachment rules emanate from the senate rules, and the senate rules emanate from the constitution.  Bakit ko nasasabi yon? E ako ang co-author ng impeachment rules e. Nung kay Justice Corona, ako ang chairman ng committee of rules eh, yun yung sinulat ko na ginagamit namin as impeachment rules. So ngayon … alin ang susundin?

ALI: The question being, kung maitatawid itong impeachment complaint initiated during the 19th congress … into the 20th congress, is that the issue here?

SOTTO:  Kung sasabihin ng senado…ng 19 th congress … pagdating ng June 13, pag-adjourn sine die ng senado, sasabihin nila na yung impeachment court ay iba, it’s not a legislative body …   anong mangyayari?  Ike-carry over sa 20th congress? So the 20th congress can decide … sapagkat doon may bagong labingdalawa .. Although … may dalawa o tatlo na galing sa 19th congress na reelectionist … Pero the thing is their term ends June 30 ng tanghali. So panibagong term itong papasukan nila , so they’re part of the new 12 of the 20th congress.

PAT-P: So Sino po ang magdedecide … Supreme Court?

SOTTO: Puwede rin. Pero ako ang tingin ko yung 20th congress ang maganda mag-decide.

So. Clearly, whether or not he is elected senate prez by a majority (13) of his peers in the 20th, Sotto, once the Senate convenes on July 30, will contest the continuity of the impeachment court on grounds that the 20th Senate is a new Senate, 9 of the senators being new members, or something like that. Which means more delays, if not a complete stop to the trial, as in, better luck next time, next year.

But that would smack too much of trapo politics. Absent ba si Sotto when the Senate as continuous body was being explained extensively by legal luminaries in all media?

Atty. Rene Bueno:  Kapag impeachment court na ang Senado, puwede magpatuloy na litisin ang complaint … puwede ring i-set aside until after elections. … Marami nang jurisprudence re the Senate as a continuous body, no one can interrupt this function, and the main purpose is to maintain the stability of the government.  https://www.youtube.com/

Prof. Antonio Contreras: The concept of the Philippine Senate as a continuing body refers to its structure, composition and functioning, which ensures that its operations continue seamlessly despite periodic changes in its membership. This principle has legal and practical implications, making the Senate distinct from the House of Representatives. https://web.archive.org/

Fr. Ranhilio Aquino:  It is instructive that the 1987 Constitution and the 1935 Constitutions of the Philippines have staggered senators’ terms—thus assuring the continuity of the chamber…. https://manilastandard.net/

The trial can continue, pick up where the Senate court leaves off, once the new members have been sworn in. Naturally the newbies are expected to be capable of catching up, or they have no place in those august halls.

Besides, it’s not as if they weren’t keeping tabs on the Senate and QuadComm hearings last year like we all were, and we want to hear it all, prosecution AND defense. Technicalities be damned.

Sotto ever trying hard

By Oscar P. Lagman, Jr.

TWENTY YEARS ago, I wrote in this space under the title “Unfit for the Senate” that senatorial candidates Ramon Revilla and Tito Sotto were not qualified for the Upper Chamber of Congress. Revilla had run for the Senate in 1987 and lost ignominiously, as he should have since he did not have the credentials to be a senator. But among the senatorial candidates in 1992 he ranked No. 3 in the surveys. His resume had not changed significantly from 1987, when he was rejected resoundingly by the electorate, to 1992, when he was regarded more highly by the same electorate. That was because he ran as Jose Bautista, his real name, in 1987 and as Ramon Revilla in 1992.

I ventured the opinion in the same article that if Sotto were to run as Vicente Sotto he would meet the same fate that Jose Bautista met in 1987. I wrote then that the Harvard-trained and veteran legislator has said he was not seeking reelection to the Senate because he did not relish the thought of debating with the likes of Tito Sotto, the master of toilet humor and sick jokes, host of the asinine TV show Eat Bulaga.

I wrote further that Senator Enrile should have perished the thought of debating with him as Sotto was not capable of engaging in such cerebral activity, as gauged by his participation in the Great Debate on the RP-US Treaty. His best effort in that discourse consisted of getting Eat Bulaga child star Aiza Seguerra, then too young to understand the issue, and the sex star Nanette Medved, a foreign citizen, to join the pro-base rally at the Luneta and leading the chant “Yes to the bases.” Such was Sotto’s grasp of the burning issue of the time.

Both Sotto and Revilla were elected to the Senate that year, Sotto placing first among the winners, no doubt by virtue of his popularity among what columnist Tony Abaya referred to as the “squealing masa,” the shrieking audience of the inane Eat Bulaga. As Sotto continued to appear in Eat Bulaga during his first term, he was elected in 1998 to another term. In all those years he was hardly heard in the Upper Chamber of Congress.

Then came the historic impeachment trial of President Joseph Estrada. When the former Securities and Exchange Commission chair Perfecto Yasay testified, Sotto stood up and addressed Yasay. This is how the dialogue went:

Sotto: Can you tell this court the telephone service provider that you use for your cellphone?

Yasay: “I used at that time Piltel.”

Sotto: “Digital, analog, GSM?”

Yasay: “I was using an old Motorola set.”

Sotto: “Okay, thank you.”

That was the extent of Sotto’s participation in that significant chapter of the country’s history.

After the trial had been aborted, Sotto tried to justify his “no” vote on the opening of the Jose Velarde envelope by saying that he had consulted legal eagles including former justices of the Supreme Court, and all of them advised him to oppose the opening of the envelope. To have to consult legal luminaries on whether to open an envelope thought to contain incriminating evidence against Erap meant he was incapable of making even such a simple decision.

Having served two consecutive terms in the Senate he was ineligible to run for re-election in 2004. He ran again in 2007 under the banner of TEAM Unity, the coalition backed by then President Arroyo. It will be recalled that Gloria ran for the Senate in 1995 and for vice-president in 1998 as a look-alike of Nora Aunor — obviously to win the votes of the “squealing masa.” Had she found a party to sponsor her candidacy for president in 1998, which she had originally wanted to do, Sotto would have been her running mate. Anyway, demonized because of his “no” vote on the opening of the Jose Velarde envelope, as Senator Miriam Santiago put it, Sotto ended up in 19th place in that year’s senatorial race.

To keep his name in the consciousness of the voters, he was appointed in 2008 as chairman of the Dangerous Drug Board by his patron Gloria. During the Lower House’s inquiry in 2009 into the alleged bribery attempt to release the Alabang Boys arrested in a buy-bust operation, Sotto somehow was able to insert himself into the inquiry. He tried mightily to participate in the deliberations but since he was only peripherally connected to the issue at hand, he did not get any chance to voice his thoughts. But at one point, Quezon Congressman Danilo Suarez, another Gloria loyalist, asked Sotto, “Why are there Caucasians in PDEA operations?”

It seemed from the irrelevance of the question that Suarez was merely giving fellow Gloria ally the chance to get some exposure as the inquiry was being televised live. Sotto answered: “The PDEA is structurally different from the US DEA.” The answer equally irrelevant to the issue being resolved and Sotto having gotten his exposure, though fleeting it was, Suarez dismissed the matter. Sotto remained a mere onlooker/listener for the rest of the session.

In 2010 Sotto ran again for the Senate. To distance himself from the discredited Arroyo, he ran under the banner of the National People’s Coalition, the party of Boss Danding Cojuangco, who quietly supported the candidacy of Noynoy. Sotto got elected this time.

Then came the impeachment of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, Arroyo’s first line of defense against future criminal charges. There was nothing Sotto had done since the Erap impeachment trial in 2001 to qualify him to sit as judge in the impeachment of Gutierrez. In response to the wide speculation that he, being an ally of Gloria Arroyo, would vote to acquit Gutierrez, the Inquirer quoted him as saying: “People should not be judgmental and avoid speculating on the individual stand for each senator. They’re not helping the Senate any by doing that.” Bothered by the wide speculation that he would vote according to the bidding of his former patron, he declared that there are 23 republics in the Senate, implying that all senators are independent minded.

Yet, in the trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona he admitted that he went by the wishes of the people when as judge he should have decided on the basis of evidence presented for his evaluation. Said he when he cast his vote: “The real judge in this trial is the citizenry. They heard the two sides. In my conscience, I have heard their decision. And for them I vote guilty.”

In his speech against the RH Bill, he said his son died five months after he was born, attributing his death to complications arising from his wife taking the oral contraceptive pill Diane. However, information indicated that the product Diane became available in the market only after his son had died, destroying completely his sob story. He didn’t sound credible from the beginning. Here is a macho man (what with his mustache and beard) sobbing like a little boy whose large scoop of ice cream had just fallen on the floor. It was obviously plain acting, and it was bad acting, including on the part of his former detractor Enrile, who was not moved one bit by the “emotional breakdown” of Corona during the latter’s trial but who came to console the sobbing Sotto.

Tito Sotto should stop trying to sound and look like a senator in the mold of the senators of the 1950s. The more he tries, the more he reinforces his image as the intellectually challenged student of Wanbol University, the fictional school in the TV variety show Iskul Bukol.

In fact, the TV clip wherein he let out a guffaw after saying he could not have plagiarized Robert Kennedy because what he said was in Tagalog, a language Kennedy did not know, could pass for a scene in Iskul Bukol.

“70% of us are for the RH Bill”

My Rant
Marian Pastor Roces

Tito S affects gravitas. He will simply not be goaded by riffraff. He will not be persuaded to engage mere pests. We are all beneath him. If we’re so smart we should have been voted into the Senate. But we’re not in the august halls because our smarts have been bought by drug lords.

His contempt is so extreme, we have to invent new words to detox. Such poison!

He thinks he will have the last laugh. I can just hear him think this in his complete silence as we enjoy ourselves.

Yep this is one helluva male chauvinist pig (pardon the period vocab).

So this ugly business can’t end here.

So I won’t let it rest—if only for one more day. Even if it costs. Time and poise. In fact, even if it costs me the patience of some of you out there.

Because we can’t yield to Tito S an inch of what we’ve earned in political maturity. Because we can’t cede to this cretin our common sense.

All of us who earn our keep by creating. Paragraphs, projects, objects, strawberry jam, alternatives, rice harvests, buildings, toys, blogs, systems, dikes, events, boats, policies. Satire. Cheating, we know, drains the product of sizzle. Makes our work like soda without the fizz. Di na lang bale outcomes.

Plagiarism, we know, is a particular kind of stealing. It is a crime that comes with a slap and a kick at our earnest effort.

Plagiarism is Robert Blair Carabuena slapping and cursing at Saturnino Fabros trying to do a job with dignity.

Copying without attribution invites the derision of innovators. And reduces makers into cheap labor—not a fate our leaders should wish upon us.

Copying, we know, is different from emulating, evoking, distilling, paraphrasing, mimickry. Different, in fact, from making facsimiles and repros, as lawmakers everywhere ought to know.

Copying, in fact, is kleptomania. Sotto helping himself to other people’s stuff when he thinks no one’s looking—a pathology.

And translating, we know, needs to name the original voice. Otherwise, its just impudence. But impudence, we know, is the capital Sotto used to gain notoriety.

We KNOW all these fine points.

Tito S knows all these fine points. Its not as though he was born in jail or something.

But the dif between him and us, is: we don’t imagine we’ll get away with this level of bad. With this assault on the concept of an honest day’s work.

Seriously, this is the same impunity Zaldy A thinks he’s entitled to. Seriously, this is not hyperbole.

And here we get to the reason for my rant.

Both Zaldy A and Tito S (and a lot of you politicians out there) imagine they have the masses in their corner. Think their enormous power derives from the approval or silence of unthinking multitudes.

Hell, no. Their enormous power comes from old-boy-old-girl cabals. Comes from huge, nearly unimaginable monies staving off any possibility of trapo meltdown.

And given the chance, WE KNOW, the poorest, the most prostituted, the most demoralized Filipinos, know what indignity is. Know what trapo arrogance is.

But know, too, that impunity is self-delusion.

Those who indulge this delusion, think that fine lines— like the lines plagiarism draws between conceit and diligence —are merely middle class issues. That the poor don’t care.

This is my image: we are all Saturnino Fabros, traffic enforcer. We all have 6 children. We all know the 6 children can’t have 6 children too. Yes even the cyber bullies are Fabros.

70% of us are for the RH Bill.

We speak different languages but we are not as divided as Tito S and his ilk assume. For those on the net, the languages of satire and informed banter. For those like Fabros, the language of quiet dignity.

And this majority that can come together in a 70% consensus, we know, is not a delusion.

sotto’s insolence, budget blues #RH

last wednesday, comedian senator tito sotto wrapped up his turno en contra with a sorry attempt at profundity, lifted, yet again, yes again, this time from a 1966 speech of bobby kennedy, and this time, translated into tagalog, presumably by his staff, and atrociously at that.  when challenged, he reportedly said, marunong pala managalog si kennedy, ha.  josko, parang sinapian ni iskalera of the infamous iskul bukol,  lol.  good job.

nakakadesespera, my mother would say, as in nakaka-despair, na kailangan pang ipaliwanag kay sotto na plagiarism din yon?  kahit pa ipinasalin niya sa tagalog, hindi pa rin kanya ‘yon.  what he did was to appropriate and claim as his not just the sentiments of kennedy re nation and small actions but also the way it was expressed.  and he can’t claim fair use, excuse me, not in an official senate speech where he is on record as saying that everything in his speech was original.

The making of quotations from a published work if they are compatible with fair use and only to the extent justified for the purpose, including quotations from newspaper articles and periodicals in the form of press summaries: Provided, That the source and the name of the author, if appearing on the work, are mentioned;

he says a friend texted him the material.  without attribution to kennedy?  friend ba ‘yon o foe?  o me attribution but sotto thought, ah 1966, wala pang internet noon, wala ito sa google, mwahaha.

the worst of it is, walang sanctions on sotto, the arrogant recidivist.  unfortunately, the senate president, the only one higher than sotto in the senate, who is in a position to reprimand the majority leader and his staff for intellectual dishonesty, is on the same anti-RH side as sotto, and, like sotto, all he does is insist that we answer sotto’s points rather than focus on the plagiarism.  but, really, why should we even bother?  sotto’s dishonest; he has lost all credibility.

Ryan Edward Chua ‏@ryan_chua
Sen. Enrile says Senate should not concern itself with Sotto plagiarism issue: “Hindi ko na papatulan ‘yon.”

ganoon.  eh nakakawala din ng credibility ‘yang pagkampi kay sotto at pag-condone ng dishonesty.  where is the enrile of the corona impeachment trial, the one who was so strict about following the law and observing the rules of good manners and right conduct.  ay, teka, he was strict nga lang pala with prosecutors and defense counsel, but allowed fellow senator-judge miriam her rants…  so what happened to HER?  i been waiting for a WHA???  why is she so quiet now, like all the rest?  can it be, as some quarters suggest, that all of them are guilty of plagiarism in one form or another?  so complicit silang lahat?

and then, again, there’s senator drilon, who was supposed to have tweeted this yesterday:

Frank Drilon ‏@FranklinDrilon
Again, I am deeply saddened by the continuous lapse of judgment by the Senate Majority Leader. This House is not a place for mockery. 12:02 pm sept 6

apparently it’s been disowned by drilon, he has no twitter account, says his staff, and i can’t find it anymore.  hmm.  still, the question remains, why is he so quiet?  isn’t this the perfect time to take to the senate floor and challenge enrile’s and sotto’s leadership?  isn’t intellectual dishonesty, and condoning it, ethical grounds for a vote of no confidence?  or can it be that drilon does not want to antagonize sotto et al because the LP will be needing their support for the president’s budget of php 2.0006 trillion, up 10.5 % from 2012’s (1.816T), up 21 % from 2011’s (1.563T), and which leonor briones alleges to be “understated,” that is, short by 449.34 billion in principal amortizations due in 2013, and rife with “hidden and vague” items to the tune of 282 billion, how dishonest, what a coincidence.

obviously there’s going to be a lot of wheeling and dealing between the executive and legislative departments, every one looking out for himself/herself or his/her vested interests before nation’s.  but as in gloria arroyo’s time, kung di maipasa ng konggreso ang 2013 budget, this year’s budget can always be rolled over to next year.  what makes this budget so urgent, given its alleged deficiencies?  what makes it more important than the RH bill, e wala namang garantiya na ikauunlad ito ng bayan.  di bale sana kung naipasa na ang RH bill, at may budget na for the RH law.  instead, ang nasusunod ay ang wishes of 3 out of 10 filipinos and not the wishes of 7 out of 10.  anong klaseng gobyerno at demokrasya ito?

as for sotto and how to make him pay for intellectual dishonesty, it looks like we’re on our own.  like arbet bernardo’s fb status  and thread say:

The Senate Ethics Committee will not act unless a complaint is filed. So if you want to censure Sottocopier, you know what to do.

… at least pag may complaint na and they don’t act on it, para lang silang frat. Eh as of now may palusot pa sila, walang complaint, so they can’t act.

and to my question, where are the cause-oriented lawyers who are usually quick to file complaints? they won’t move on their own? maybe they plagiarize too… arbet’s response was: where is oliver lozano when you need him LOL.

seriously, what happened to civil society?  puro ba na-co-opt na ng aquino admin?  and what about mainstream media?  fence-sitting as always, hanggang reportage lang, walang taking a stand against plagiarism and spreading the word, explaining the immorality of it, down to the masses?  and what about the church, the guardian-kuno of our morals?  okay lang sa kanila sotto’s kind of deceit and duplicity because it’s for the anti-RH cause?  the ends justify the means?  good job.

sotto deserves to be sanctioned, declared in contempt of the people, for intellectual dishonesty.  it wouldn’t be the first time that a sotto is found guilty of contempt and “falsehoods,” by the way.  tila it runs in the family.