Lawmakers pass 21 bills on third reading during 15th Congress

DURING the Fifteenth Congress, 43 out of the 283 House members scored perfect attendance and only 21 bills were approved on third reading. The House of Representatives kicked off 2010 by dropping in February House Bill 3306, or the Right of Reply Bill, which seeks to penalize media outfits that will refuse to print, air and/or post the reply of an “aggrieved” party “named and identified” in a news article by as much as P50,000.

In June, lawmakers of the Fourteenth Congress killed the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, which will have enabled the public to access government records and transactions that are of public interest.

The FOI Act was to be ratified by the House to become a law but before the legislators could do so, Rep. Pedro Romualdo of Camiguin raised the issue of quorum.

Only 128 congressmen responded to the roll call, short of the 135 lawmakers needed to tackle the bill and other measures on the agenda.

The Fourteenth Congress adjourned without ratifying the FOI Act.

The House Committee on Electoral Reforms and Suffrage was kept busy by protests from losing candidates in the elections on May 10.

The noise, however, seemed to have failed to dampen the Commission on Elections successfully holding the Philippines first fully automated polls.

A masked man told a House hearing that he was involved in massive fraud in the May 10 balloting, a claim that was dismissed by the lawmakers.

The House of Representatives and the Senate jointly proclaiming then Sen. Benigno Aquino 3rd as the new President and former Mayor Jejomar Binay of Makati City as the new vice president of the Philippines in July effectively quashed talks of Gloria Arroyo—Mr. Aquino’s predecessor—supposedly intending to extend her term beyond June 30.

Rep. Feliciano Belmonte Jr. of Quezon City, a former Lakas-Kampi Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD) stalwart before joining the Liberal Party prior to the May polls, was elected as the Speaker of the House.

Belmonte beat Lakas-Kampi CMD bet and eventual Minority Leader Edcel Lagman by a mile, 227-29.

With the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council yet to be convened by President Aquino until now, passing the proposed P1.645-trillion budget for 2011 became the priority of the Fifteenth Congress.

Zero budget
But unlike the race for speakership, passing the budget was not a walk in the park for the majority.

During budget presentations of various government agencies before the House Committee on Appropriations, it was revealed that the 2011 General Appropriations Act allotted zero budget for the capital outlay of state universities and colleges, sitio electrification and palay procurement, among other blows to the educational and agricultural sectors.

The zero budget for a number of social services prompted lawmakers from the minority bloc, led by now Rep. Gloria Arroyo of Pampanga, party-list representatives and some from the majority coalition to question the P29-billion budget of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) headed by Secretary Corazon Soliman.

Of the DSWD’s allocation, P21 billion will be spent for the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, an anti-poverty strategy started in 2008 that provides cash assistance to extremely poor households to allow family members to meet certain human development goals such as health, nutrition and education provided that they comply with certain conditions.

Under the terms of the CCT program, children 3 to 5 years old must attend day care/pre-school at least 85 percent of the time and children 6 to 14 years old must attend school at least 85 percent of the time.

Also children 0 to 5 years old must get regular health check-ups and vaccinations, children 6 to 14 years old must undergo deworming sessions every six months, parents must attend responsible parenthood sessions and pregnant women must get pre-and post-natal care and be attended to during childbirth by a skilled/trained birth attendant.

Mrs. Arroyo made her very first criticism of the current administration during plenary debate on the budget for the DSWD, noting that the Aquino administration’s target of having 2.3 million households as CCT beneficiaries for 2011 was not feasible.

She cited her administration taking three years to bring the number of CCT beneficiaries to 1 million because preparing for the absorptive capacity of government agencies, including health and education, needs time considering increased demands that the CCT creates.

The sheer number of the President Aquino’s allies in the Fifteenth Congress, however, prevailed in the end and the CCT budget was left intact.

Speaker Belmonte then assured his colleagues that the government will spend the P21 billion for CCT for deserving families and that the lawmakers will monitor CCT budget disbursements every step of the way.

Impeachment move
In August, the House of Representatives rekindled old moves to impeach Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, a classmate of Mrs. Arroyo’s husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo.

The House Committee on Justice, headed by Rep. Niel Tupas, thought that the impeachment proceedings against Gutierrez were moving smoothly until the Supreme Court on September 14 issued a status quo ante order.

In deference to Belmonte, who had said that he would wait for the High Court, the Tupas committee halted its bid to oust the Ombudsman.

Another perennial issue which made waves in the Fifteenth Congress is the reproductive health (RH) bill, which mandates the state to provide safe contraceptives and pills to families who would want them, hogged the picture as the 2010 drew to a close.

Renewed interest in passing the bill came after President Aquino, a devout Catholic, made a statement that his administration was throwing support behind give both natural and artificial forms of family planning.

There are six pending RH bills, whose merits are being heard by the House Committee on Population and Family Relations.

Motives of the bills were questioned by opponents of the measures, among them Rep. Pablo Garcia of Cebu, who said that the RH bills were being debated in the wrong committee.

A technical working group has been formed to consolidate the six pending bills.

Voting 213-7, with two abstentions, the Fifteenth Congress concurred with Proclamation 75, which granted amnesty to active and former personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police and their supporters who may have committed crimes punishable under the Revised Penal Code, the Articles of War and other laws in connection with the 2003 Oakwood mutiny, the 2006 Marines stand-off and the 2007 Peninsula Manila hotel siege.

The House of Representatives feted Filipino boxing champion Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao with a
Congressional Medal of Distinction for beating Antonio Margarito for his eighth title in as many weight divisions.

By crushing Margarito, Pacquiao snatched the World Boxing Council super welterweight crown.

In November, Rep. Walden Bello of Akbayan party-list lambasted Mrs. Arroyo before the plenary in November.

Bello said that officials of the Arroyo administration behaved like pigs and that the former president awaits prosecution and detention at the New Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa City (Metro Manila) “where she belongs.”

Also in November, the House was scandalized by news that Rep. Ronald Singson of Ilocos Sur had been
arrested in Hong Kong for possession of 6.7 grams of cocaine.

Singson has been allowed to post bail but was ordered by the court not to leave Hong Kong. –LLANESCA T. PANTI REPORTER, Manila Times