(First published in the January 29, 2013 issue of Manila Standard Today)

It is actually good to see our elected representatives take tough stands, and oppose each other with the full majesty and fury of debate, argument and appeal, reason and passion at their fullest. As I’ve always said, democracy is messy, and this should be true in Congress. These quarrels among senators and congressmen, among political parties, are meant to hold each other to account in the public arena; they check and balance each other’s ambitions, interests, and intentions, benevolent or malign. The proverbial hottest fire produces the strongest steel: in the case of the legislature, public policy.

What is saddening, however, is when the quarrel turns personal, bringing up matters wholly unrelated to policy, and causing such deep rifts among legislators that makes both meaningful cooperation and constructive opposition impossible. Of late our Senate has suffered this malaise, when a disputed disbursement of Senate funds to its members triggered a cold and hot war of words between Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and four of his harshest critics: Senators Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Alan Peter and Pia Cayetano, and Antonio Trillanes IV.

The disbursements themselves can properly be questioned (and perhaps they should, in the Senate’s best interests), but what could have simply been a debate on the propriety of the different amounts given to senators in the minority escalated into a painful conflict, with Enrile’s chief of staff and the Cayetanos’ late father dragged into the argument, and both Santiago and Enrile’s health suffering. Seemingly, this has catalyzed earlier divisions or cleavages in the upper house, in particular the Enrile-Trillanes feud, and even the debates over the RH bill, into the present conflict, with Trillanes still boasting of a leadership change, and Enrile dismissing the minority senators as practically not needed to pass bills.

Each of the senators in that august body has his or her share of flaws—all too easily aired thanks to traditional and social media—yet many of them can also be admired, and held up for the policies they advocated, or the values they stand for, and their conduct as legislators, especially during the Corona impeachment. Yet the events of the past month have all but obscured the greatness the Senate could achieve, and amplified past errors and sins, as peers hurl personal accusations at each other: Lacson to Santiago, between Alan Cayetano and Enrile, and Trillanes and Enrile.

This stands in stark contrast to the recent grilling of American Secretary of State (and Democrat) Hillary Clinton by Republican Senators over last year’s attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Watching that debate reveals the same degree of fury, with Clinton defending the actions of the State Department against pointed questions from the senators. Say what you will of the Republican Party—or the Democrats, for that matter—and even considering that partisanship has been increasing in the US in the past decade, this conflict had nonetheless been handled decently, if passionately (even if the inquisitors were left unsatisfied by Clinton’s answers).

If politics is passionate in mature democracies, it’s because politics actually is personal—but the right kind of personal. Politics should call from us our values and interests, our perspectives and worldviews, as we challenge each other over definitions of the common good, argue over the approaches and targets our policies will adopt, and hold each other to account on the matters of the “res publica”, the public business. Politics should also be personal because the resultant policies touch aspects of our lives. But personal is wrong in politics if it involves ad hominem attacks, or for that matter institutional crises like patronage politics and political dynasties unaccountable by either government or civil society. And the “personalan” the Senate has seen the past few weeks is not the politics that will advance the national interest or the common good; it only makes the business of “res publica” impossible.

It’s clear that we all need a lesson, once again, in civil political discourse. It is a ghost that long haunts Philippine politics, personal as it often turns out to be—and we have seen that ghost haunt us in debates about the RH bill, acts of plagiarism, prosecution of current and former government officials, and the election circuit. It’s regrettable that the same Senate that held its dignity during the Corona impeachment let it down, almost a year later. Such may be Filipino politics, but it ought not to be.

Follow Dean Tony La Viña on Facebook: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Twitter: @tonylavs.