As the Senate, adhering to its heavily self-promoted image as the chief fiscalizer of government, was continuing its investigations of the Legacy fiasco, the embarrassing World Bank contractor ban, the ZTE broadband scandal and other supposedly crooked transactions, it was also cooking up some anomalous deals of its own. One of these was the approval on the crucial second reading last Feb. 10 of an amendment to the city charter of Malolos, Bulacan that would convert the provincial capital into a lone congressional district.

The lead investigator in the pre-need crisis, presidential wannabe Senator Mar Roxas, was the Senate sponsor of this plot to gerrymander Bulacan to accommodate the aspirations of two Malolos politicians who could not bear to leave office next year (when their terms expire) without having some other position to go to?never mind if they had to create an entirely new congressional district to do so. And Roxas? ally in the proceedings was the chairman of the Senate committee on local governments, Senator Benigno ?Noynoy? Aquino III, who pushed for the new district?s creation, even if he (and all the other senators) had been informed about a basic, fatal flaw in the proposal.

Why would the Senate knowingly approve a law that was in direct defiance of the Constitution? Only the senators who did so (in a vote of nine to four this week) can answer that question.

More importantly, the same senators are scheduled to approve the anomalous amendment on Monday for its perfunctory third and final reading. And then the approved Senate amendment will go to a bicameral committee (the House having already approved a similar amendment), after which the amendment will become a law with the President?s signature.

But what?s so anomalous about carving a new congressional district out of the current First District of Bulacan, a grouping of six local governments, the biggest of which is Malolos? According to a couple of local lawyers who are opposing the initiative, the amendment can?t be legal because Malolos failed to meet the basic requirement of a population that could merit the creation of a new congressional district.

In two memoranda to the Senate, Malolos lawyers Victorino Aldaba and Carlo Jolette Fajardo told the Senate that the National Statistics Office has certified that the capital city had a population of 223,069 as of 2007, when the last national census was conducted. By 2010, the NSO projects that Malolos will have a population of 247,321, based on the current annual population growth rate of 3.5 percent.

But the 1987 Constitution, specifically Section 5 (1) cited by the two lawyers in their memoranda to all the senators last Nov. 11 and Nov. 22, says a new seat in the House of Representatives can only be created if a locality has more than 250,000 residents. In fact, four senators led by Senator Joker Arroyo insisted that this flaw must first be remedied before the chamber approved the amendment ?but they were outvoted last Tuesday by Roxas, Aquino and seven others during a session that barely made the chamber?s quorum requirements.

Why would the Senate, which prides itself with its fierce independence and disregard for political convenience and compromise, do such a thing? Furthermore, why would Roxas and Aquino, who like to be considered as part of the new breed of principled pols, cave in to political pressure and endorse an unconstitutional gerrymandering scheme?

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The amendment to the Malolos charter (also known as Republic Act 8754) was first proposed by the current Bulacan First District congressman, Rep. Victoria Sy-Alvarado, whose husband is widely reported in the province as a candidate for governor in 2010. The initiative to create the lone district of Malolos, known as House Bill 3693, was approved by the House committee on local governments headed by Negros Oriental First District Rep. George Arnaiz on Feb. 18, 2008 and elevated to the Senate last May 6.

But the House version, upon which Roxas? Senate Bill 1986 was entirely based, did not include a certification from the NSO to the effect that Malolos met the population requirement of the Constitution for the creation of a new congressional district. In his sponsorship of the Senate version, Roxas reportedly declared that Malolos has a population of 255,000, a figure that is also not backed up by any official census records.

In Malolos, meanwhile, the genesis of the proposal became clear: The creation of a new district is part of a plan hatched by the two top local executives?Mayor Danny Domingo and Vice Mayor Al Tengco?to stay in office after 2010, when both of their terms expire.

According to the plan, Domingo will run as congressman of the new district, while Tengco will become a candidate for Malolos mayor. After a three-year term, in 2013, both officials will switch places and everybody?including Sy-Alvarado who is supposed to stay as congressman of the remainder of the First District and her husband, the putative governor? will be happy.

After the amendment breezed through the House, it had to go to the Senate for approval. There, Tengco relied on his old Ateneo classmate, Roxas, to sponsor the bill and shepherd it to approval, with the help of Mar?s chum Aquino. Neither senator, nor any of the others who eventually voted to approve it this week, seemed to have bothered to check if Malolos?as the two local lawyers have claimed?met the constitutional population requirement.

Nor did any senator give a moment?s thought, apparently, to a recent Supreme Court ruling that nullified Congress? creation of several chartered cities all over the country because they failed to meet the population requirement stipulated in the Local Government Code. Neither did anyone in the Senate wonder why the creation of a new district in Malolos required such urgent approval, when similar requests from other localities like Pasig City and Camarines Sur had been filed much earlier?and had certified documents attesting to meeting the population requirement, no less.

Maybe they were too busy fiscalizing to be bothered by a high court decision that directly affected the creation of a Malolos congressional district and by the fact that they were railroading an amendment that seemed legally impaired from the get-go.

If this were some other controversy, something that did not involve some self-righteous senators, perhaps a call for a Senate investigation would be appropriate. Maybe we could even ask Roxas, who seems to be at the forefront of every Senate probe these days, to head up the investigation, with Aquino (as local government committee chairman) to back him up.

But, obviously, that?s not going to happen. On Monday, these two senators will in all likelihood be at the head table when the Senate gives its final approval to this mockery of the Constitution.