Sonny Alvarez, in life and in politics, was always guided by his better angels

The bicameral committee conference work of the two chambers of Congress has never been free of contentious issues, much more so when a compromise version is being written for a centerpiece legislation. The Eighth Congress, the first Congress to convene after martial law, which also witnessed the full flowering of democratic debates, was legendary for its friction-marred bicameral conference committee process. This Congress transformed bicameral work into a mini-Congress, with verbal fireworks, debates of impossible acrimony — and covert acts of character assassination — morphing into that search for the compromise legislation.

Yet, those observant enough — and the beat reporters who knew about context — did not fail to observe that rare nuance of civility between two legislators that led the hammering of the compromise bill on the two versions of the draft agrarian reform law, the centerpiece legislation of the Corazon Aquino administration: Sen. Heherson T. Alvarez — who led the enate contingent— and Rep. Edcel Lagman, main negotiator of the House of Representatives who wrote the compromise version under the spirit of rare legislative amity.