Vitriol in the Philippine Senate

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, during a Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on the PDAF (pork barrel) scandal, tagged Senator Juan Ponce Enrile as "tanda" (old man) who is "not only homicidal but also murderous."

Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, in a privilege speech before the Senate, shot back calling Santiago a “cuckoo, inane and bitter mind,” “the grandmama of all falsehood fabricators,” a “spiteful and bitterly hostile mind," and a "Peeping Tom, vile, malicious." (Rappler.com)

Senator Santiago in her own privilege speech a few days later delivered a stinging counterpunch: that Enrile is a "hypersexualized serial womanizer," "mastermind of plunder,” “the king of smuggling, gambling and illegal logging empires,” and "an icon of shameless lying.." (GMAnetwork.com)

Aside from the tolerance of an entertained, amused or irritated public, what makes these vitriol-spewing senators get away with committing such blatant defamation?

There is Section 11, Article VI of the 1987 Constitution which considers any speech or debate in the Congress or in any Committee thereof by a member of Congress to be an absolutely privileged communication. It exempts a member of Congress from liability for any speech or debate in the Congress or in any Committee thereof. The Supreme Court in Borjal v. Court of Appeals (G.R. No. 126466, 14 January 1999) ratiocinated: "The demand to protect public opinion for the welfare of society and the orderly administration of government inevitably lead to the adoption of the doctrine of privileged communication. Absolutely privileged communications are those which are not actionable even if the author has acted in bad faith."

This does not prevent, however, anyone of them from filing an ethics complaint against the other, or from any member of the Senate to move to strike out the vitriolic speeches from the Senate journal.