IN a radio interview over the weekend, Senator Nancy Binay spoke of the formation of a bloc of nine senators that would take a united position on certain issues.
The bloc, now referred to as the “seatmates bloc plus,” adds four members to the original “seatmates” group formed by Senators JV Ejercito, Juan Edgardo Angara, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Sherwin Gatchalian and Joel Villanueva. The original members had banded together in January 2017 as a way to gain support for their respective sponsored bills.
The new members are Binay and Senators Richard Gordon, Loren Legarda and Cynthia Villar, she said.
In the interview, Binay cheerfully referred to Villar as the “mama bear,” of the group, Gordon as its “papa bear,” and Legarda as the bloc’s older sister.
Asked about a photo that Ejercito had posted of the seatmates bloc and her having dinner, Binay said the “children” met first because the “parents” were away.
While Binay said the expanded bloc would cooperate on certain issues—she did not say what these were—it may also become a way for senators seeking reelection win 2019 to band together.
In a Senate with 23 members, a bloc of nine could prove influential—if they remain united over core issues. But to date, we have no clear picture of what these core issues might be, and logic dictates that as the group grows larger, common ground might shrink as opportunities for disagreements grow.
Moreover, Binay’s flippant characterization of the new bloc as a family of bears adds no gravitas to a group whose original name suggests the members are still in school, instead of the Senate of the republic.
Nor does it help that one of the original members of the seatmates bloc recently engaged online critics in an exchange of vulgar insults on social media, using language better suited to the gutter than the halls of the Senate—then refused to apologize for sinking to such a low level of discourse.
Did this senator’s so-called seatmates remind their errant colleague that he needed to behave at all times in a manner that would not put the Senate to shame? The most that one of them could manage was to say that senators, too, were only human, and could get hurt.
We all know this, of course. We have been reminded of this fact over the years by the steady decline in the caliber of our senators—seatmates or otherwise.