State of the Nation Address

An undemocratic decorum

Posted July 31, 2008 00:16:00(Mla Time)

Philippine Daily Inquirer
Manuel L. Quezon III

When the usher of the Queen of England summons the House of Commons to go to the House of Lords to hear the monarch’s speech to open Parliament, the door is ceremonially slammed in his face. When the president of the United States, continuing Woodrow Wilson’s innovation on reporting on the State of the Union to Congress in person, goes to the Capitol, he must wait until Congress convenes, and is then fetched by a committee and subsequently introduced by a functionary of the House. In the case of Parliament, it’s the Lower House’s reminder to the sovereign that her powers have limits; and in the case of republican America, it’s a reminder of the separation of powers.

Last Monday, Congress behaved not as a co-equal branch of government, but as a groveling institution that views itself as subordinate to the chief executive. The preening and posturing of the members of the House of Representatives, in particular, demonstrated how powerless they believe themselves to be, and how they have to compensate for it by competing with each other in terms of their costumes. The most obvious demonstration of decadence is when tradition is stripped of all meaning and ends up reduced to an obsession over superficial things: when appearance ends up trumping substance.

Louis XIV moved to Versailles to escape the barricades put up by the Parisians. He also imprisoned the aristocracy in a gilded, but still iron, cage of protocol. As members of the nobility lost their power, and as their dependence on their ruler grew, so did they develop a fanatical regard for fashion, protocol and ritual. In much the same manner, the House has taken to viewing the State of the Nation Address as something like a public ball, a political soiree in which ostentatious display is the main priority.

It is useless, of course, to point out to our legislators that you do not wear diamonds before 6 p.m., or that the President’s annual address is not only an afternoon, but a work, affair. I am all for the “terno,” the “baro’t saya,” the Maria Clara, the “kimona” and even the “balintawak” as fitting costumes for official occasions, but even these dresses have more restrained daytime versions while what our legislators wore were, on the whole, the elaborate versions more suitable for evening wear.

Photographs and accounts of the pre-martial law State of the Nation Addresses suggest that the annual event was a much more restrained and businesslike affair. Members of Congress wore what they normally wore during ordinary session days, as did our various presidents. When I asked around when, exactly, the president’s report became an excuse to have a congressional fashion show, most recollections indicate that the transformation took place during the era of the Batasang Pambansa [the Ferdinand Marcos-era National Legislature]. Female legislators and the wives of assemblymen wanted to compete with Madame Imeldific. Our legislators have yet to discard this legacy of ostentation of the dictatorship.

But it may be more useful to point out that as the years have progressed, our speakers and Senate presidents have abandoned all pretenses of being more than groveling toadies of the incumbent. This comes from a feeble understanding of what they are—heads of the two chambers of a co-equal branch of government—and therefore they fall victim to the belief that gallantry requires fawning over the chief executive.

As I understand it, the old procedure was appropriately symbolic. The House speaker and Senate president would open the special session for the specific purpose of hearing the President’s message. A joint reception committee would then be dispatched to fetch the President of the Philippines (this is the formal and constitutional title of our chief executive; the “President, Republic of the Philippines” so beloved of officialdom today was correct under the 1973 Constitution but no longer so, the 1935 title having been readopted; furthermore, stating the name of the president is wrong because it is insulting—the protocol is, the president of the Philippines requires no introduction).

When the committee, the president in tow, reached the Session Hall of the House, an official (the sergeant-at-arms) would then inform the speaker and Senate president of the presence of the president, and out of respect Congress would rise as he entered. At which point the president would then join the heads of the two chambers and then be invited to deliver the State of the Nation Address. A pointed reminder, throughout, that the master of the two chambers of Congress are its members and not the chief executive; a manifestation of the whole exercise being the fulfillment of constitutional obligation and not presidential grace and favor.

But last Tuesday we saw the Speaker and the Senate President galloping up to the helipad to personally greet the President, and the Speaker breaking protocol (as all his recent predecessors have done) in fulsomely introducing the President; and of the members of the House going beyond politely rising to welcome her and instead mobbing her. The only tradition properly maintained, was the band playing Tirso Cruz Sr.’s “Mabuhay,” the presidential anthem since prewar days, to mark the arrival of the President.

Tradition, formality, protocol, ritual—all have their place in a democratic and republican setting. They can help give officialdom and the citizenry alike a sense of scale, scope and place in national commemorations and festivals. They tie us to those who came before, and facilitate the conduct of events in an orderly and dignified manner. But when their meaning and purpose are forgotten or ignored, we have what we saw: a national disgrace and demonstration of how obsession with appearances can alienate the citizenry.