"Suppose you were an idiot," Mark Twain once wrote. "And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.."

Mark Twain's comment sums up the sentiment of many who gagged when congressmen shouted approval for House Resolution 197 even as the gallery booed. HR197 forms Congress into a constituent assembly that'd revise the Constitution, scrap the Senate and install a parliament, "upon a three-fourths vote of all its members."

To railroad "con-ass", Speaker Jose de Vencia, Luis Villafuerte and administration congressmen first rewrote a House rule. They scrapped a provision that charter changes, proposed by the House, must follow procedure for legislation, i.e. the Senate must concur. Changing an internal rule of one house, the congressmen claim, alters the present two house structure.

It does not. Rep. Francis Escudero pointed out, rightly, that other rules, on the books, implement a bicameral system. Take bicameral conference committees. Their decisions, say, to change the name of a street or a school, in President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's home province, must be confirmed by both Senate and House, before they become law.

"There can be no charter change without participation of the Senate," constitutional expert Joaquin Bernas, SJ. writes. "We can debate about the manner or extent of Senate participation." ( Voting separately, as most senators insist. Or accepting a House invitation for a joint session .to propose amendments to the 1987 Constitution.).

"But the Senate can not be excluded altogether," Fr. Bernas explains. "This is because Charter change proposals have been committed, by the Constitution, to Congress which is a bicameral body." This the constitutional minefield that the Supreme Court, now led by Chief Justice Ricardo Puno, must tred through.

"Won't you come into my parlor?,/ Said the spider to the fly", the nursery rhyme goes. Except for Senator Miriam Santiago, plus two or three others, majority of senators will spurn the House invitation for a joint session, President Manuel Villar says. In fact, legal experts, like Senator Joker Arroyo, have kept their black robes pressed for a predictable Supreme Court battle against a House-only constituent assembly.

With or without the senators, the "cha-cha" express will leave. And congressmen will propose, as a start, suspending the May 2007 elections. ( So, were you one of those conned into believing that "No El" was dead? ). They'd then anoint themselves members of an interim parliament, extending their own terms of office for six months - for the moment.

In addition, they'd also dismantle limits on terms of office. That way, they can be candidates forever. "In a parliamentary system, there are no such restrictions,", Rep. Constantino Jaraula blustered without blushing.This is raw self-seeking greed.. Where avarice rules, "hypocrisy becomes good taste", to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw.

Filipinos do better with a pithy word : garapal. Of course, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines' president did not use garapal in his scathing denunciation of HR 197. Jaro archbishop Angel Lagdameo described con-ass as "fraudulently illegal and scandalously immoral." The National Council of Churches, the mainstream Protestant umbrella group, will join the December 15 prayer rally being organized by the CBCP.

Civil society earlier refused to hit the streets in response to calls by discredited opposition leaders like the detained Joseph "Erap" Estrada, "Magdalo" mutineers, and communists trying to hitch-hike on every protest. Their State-of-the-Nation demos flubbed. But will anger over cha-cha, this time, strike a different reaction?

It will partially depend on how the brawl before the Supreme Court plays out. And how will abstract issues, like Senate and House voting separately, translate into relevant concerns of the citizen?.

The Davide court built public confidence by it's decisions on heretofore untouchable interests, like the coco-levy loot that Marcos cronies hoarded. And Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr set impeccable standards of fairness in the Estrada impeachment trial.

The Panganiban court demonstrated independence when it struck down Arroyo executive orders on pre-emptive calibrated response and blanket shields for executives from testifying before Congress. It junked the "people's initiative" to revise the Constitution as a "gigantic fraud."

Unless proven otherwise, there is every reason to assume that the Puno Court will be equally independent and forthcoming.

With it's 231 members, the House says there is no need to vote separately. No way, the 23-member Senate says. The reason for a separate vote is: "Congress is a bicameral body and was made such after an intense debate in the 1986 Constitutional Convention," as Fr Bernas explains. "The Constitution leaves the devising of procedural rules" to a conass or concon --- "provided that the rules do not transgress the bicameral character of Congress."

Common folk will simplify that constitutional puzzle into a question of fairness. For now, they agree with what Will Rogers once said: "We have the best Congress money could buy."

(E-mail: juan_mercado@boholchronicle.com)