The country cannot continue electing lawmakers who behave more like political combatants than public servants. Congressmen and senators are entrusted with the duty to legislate measures that improve the lives of ordinary citizens, not to waste public time and money on endless attacks against rivals. When personal ambition becomes more important than public welfare, the entire nation pays the price.
The Constitution did not create Congress to function as a theater for political revenge, media spectacle, or power games between competing factions. Legislators are expected to study the conditions of the people, identify gaps in public services, and craft laws that strengthen education, healthcare, agriculture, labor, transportation, and social protection. Yet too many officials enter office without seriousness toward legislation itself. Hearings that should tackle inflation, unemployment, food insecurity, classroom shortages, hospital deficiencies, and corruption are often drowned by partisan noise designed to destroy reputations rather than solve national problems. Public office has become attractive to many not because of service, but because of access to influence, public funds, and political machinery.
This failure becomes more offensive when one considers the amount of public money spent to sustain the operations of Congress and the Senate. Taxpayers finance the salaries, staff, travel, offices, security, intelligence funds, and discretionary allocations of lawmakers with the expectation that these resources will produce meaningful legislation. Citizens do not work hard and pay taxes merely to fund televised political quarrels and endless grandstanding. Every wasted session, every irrelevant investigation, and every politically motivated inquiry consumes time and resources that should have been directed toward drafting laws that could lower the cost of living, improve public hospitals, raise wages, protect farmers and fishermen, and create long-term economic stability. A nation burdened by poverty cannot afford lawmakers who treat governance like a personal battlefield.
Even worse is the growing public suspicion that many politicians deliberately weaponize power while quietly participating in the misuse of government funds. Instead of acting as guardians of the national treasury, some lawmakers are repeatedly linked to questionable insertions, bloated appropriations, and projects that produce little benefit to the public. While millions of Filipinos struggle with hunger, job insecurity, poor transportation, and collapsing public services, enormous sums disappear into programs that lack transparency and accountability. This is not merely incompetence; it is a betrayal of the trust attached to elected office. Public service loses its meaning when lawmakers enrich political networks while the people remain trapped in hardship.
Congressmen and senators must return to the true purpose of their office before public faith in democratic institutions collapses even further. They must study the law, understand the responsibilities attached to legislation, and remember that their mandate comes from the people whose lives depend on effective governance. The country needs lawmakers who spend more time reading bills than rehearsing attacks, more time consulting citizens than protecting political allies, and more time solving national problems than manufacturing political chaos. Public office is not a privilege for self-preservation and personal gain. It is a duty, and those who cannot honor that duty have no place remaining in government.
