Senator Ralph Recto “concedes” defeat, has accepted the people’s will, and bows out of the Senate. A rather tragic end to an otherwise ______ (fill in the blank) career.
However, he is intransigent to the end. He believes that creating and passing the 12% E-VAT law is the right thing to do, despite the issue being unpopular to the people. Let me quote his speech (with my annotations in italics):
[QUOTE]
It is a verdict I accept without rancor or bitterness. Really.
I will go gently out of this institution, comforted in the thought, that in every waking day that I had served out my mandate, I did it to the best of my ability, and always with the best interest of the country in mind. Really.
And this is what gives me the optimism to hope that after passions of the moment have become distant echoes of the past, history’s judgment of my work here will be kind. Sana nga, since the judgement of the majority of the people is not.
If I shall end up as a footnote in history, I shall be blissfully content of being remembered as one who chose principles over popularity and did what was right rather than what was expedient. Take THAT, Kiko and Manny.
That I shall be remembered as one who did not hide in safe harbors but who sailed in open seas, sometimes against the gale of public opinion, out of the belief, like sailors of yore, that one can only make progress if he loses sight of the land. E-VAT is right and you people are wrong.
The duty of a member of this chamber is not to pander to what is popular but to uphold what is right, a senator who came before us said. Yeah right. And that senator was no believer in land reform, too. Was he right then?
[ENDQUOTE]
In several sentences, he managed to hit his co-Wednesday group members Senators-elect Francisco Pangilinan and Manuel Villar, the opposition, the people who voted against him, and the people who were against E-VAT. He really is intransigent.
The problem with the E-VAT is that it is just a temporary fix. The first quarter’s deficit showed that E-VAT is not the answer. All it did it just add to that tank called tax collection, and that law did not fix the leaks. With the leaks untended, they will grow large soon. And raising corporate income taxes while adding millions of reasons for tax deductions is somewhat ironic (see here, here, and here). Besides, the biggest loser in the E-VAT is not the big companies anyway, it is the people, the very same people that voted Recto out of the Senate.
Recto wanted to end (temporarily) his political career as a tragic hero who stood up for what is right. Unfortunately, for those who are burdened with the additional taxes, it is more a tragic end to someone who is probably not right.
But on a brighter note, he called on the Senate to hold the fort, since the Chacha Choochoo Train needs to be derailed again.
