Bloodbath in Congress

Shortly before midnight today, Feb. 5, Jose de Venecia, the embattled speaker of the House of Representatives, lost, for all practical purposes, control of Congress. His opponents only needed 120 votes to declare the speaker position vacant. As of this posting, those who voted against him had gone past 160.

In many ways, de Venecia knew his 12-year reign in Congress was coming to an end. This was evident long before the congressmen stayed late on Monday to vote on his fate. This was apparent the moment his son, Jose de Venecia III, went public with his accusation concerning the NBN-ZTE scam and he could do nothing to stop him.

On Monday night, de Venecia gave a sort of valedictory, a long, long speech that harangued Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for her sins. But it was interesting if only for the context de Venecia provided.

By his own admission, he had played a part in the political metamorphosis of Arroyo, beginning with her plea, according to de Venecia, to make her his running-mate in the 1998 elections.

De Venecia lost in his bid for the presidency but the rise of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who won the vice presidency in that elections, became inevitable at the point. He had been with her every step of the way since then, he said. But now look at what she’s doing to him? he seems to be asking.

De Venecia sounded no differently from Magneto in X-Men: The Last Stand. When Magneto, who had been injected with a serum that turned him into a mere mortal, saw his ally Phoenix wreaking havoc, he exclaimed, almost to himself: “What have I done?”

Is de Venecia now conscience-stricken? We hope he is. As Bayan Muna Representative Satur Ocampo said (in his speech explaining his no vote), now is de Venecia’s chance to redeem himself.

For really, de Venecia is the quintessential trapo (traditional politician). If anything, he perfected the art of political wheeling-dealing that characterized his reign in Congress for more than a decade. Contrary to the image that he wants to project nowadays, he was never known to be an independent legislator. He presided over a rubber-stamp Congress. He was the godfather of a political mafia.

As Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago put it on Monday, na-karma si de Venecia. He, in other words, was a victim of his own folly, of his own greed for power, of his own kind.

De Venecia, in short, was his own Frankenstein’s monster. (PinoyPress.net)