Palace softens stance on RH bill, drops birth control in Ledac meet

An expanded list of priority bills to be discussed in the first Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac) meeting scheduled on Feb. 28 was finally presented by Malacañang to the media yesterday but it did not include the controversial Responsible Parent-hood (RP) bill, Freedom of Information (FoI) bill as well the Whistleblowers Act which President Aquino previously said he would vouch for.

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda explained that the five-pronged RP bill or the sanitized version of the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill was omitted from the list out of courtesy to the members of the Catholic Church pending the final results of their dialogs.

“I think that’s the whole idea of holding a dialog (is) to listen to their (Church leaders’) views. We have made that position very clear with them. We will maintain the five-point statement (on RP bill) but we would like to have their views as well. So we are going to finish the dialog and whatever inputs they have there — without necessarily moving away from our position of providing access to both natural and artificial family planning methods — will also be placed in part and parcel of the Responsible Parenthood bill,” Lacierda told reporters at a news conference.

“The President has not backtracked on this (Responsible Parenthood Bill). We are aware of the sensitivity of this issue and the President is keen on listening to all sectors concerned,” Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. explained for his part.

Insofar as the Whistleblowers Act is concerned, Lacierda said there is already a proposal to that effect that is currently pending at the House of Representatives and they will just push it along with their draft bill seeking the amendment of the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA).

Lacierda explained that their proposed amendments on the AMLA will already address the legal deficiencies of our laws in terms of complying with the international standards of money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism.

“Likewise, in light of the current issues involving financial scams in the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines), there may also be a need to look closely in the role of the Anti-Money Laundering Council in tracing illegally obtained funds,” Lacierda added.

On the FoI bill, Lacierda said they decided not to include it yet given the sensitivity of the issue involved on this aspect, claiming that while the President believes in the public’s constitutional rights to have free access on information, there are certain concerns that have to be addressed first and that is what they are studying right now.

Malacañang will have a total of 17 priority bills to be presented come the Ledac meeting but only 12 of them were presented yesterday owing to the fact that the drafts for the last five legislative agenda are still in the process of completion.

Ochoa told a radio interview yesterday that their priority bills generally envision their plans for the nation’s human development, infrastructure development, economic development, sovereignty and security and good governance — all of which are consistent with the 16-point agenda of the Aquino administration.

A measure which intends to postpone the holding regular schedule of elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) was among the priorities of the government and Lacierda said this is geared toward their commitment to cleanse the election system in that particular area.

“We want to prevent abuses in the past. We all know what happened during the ARMM elections where even those who were dead are voting. We want to cleanse everything; we want to prevent a system where… the ARMM is a region where one will run to if he wants to win — this is something that has been going on for the longest time. And so, we want to make sure that ARMM elections will also be a place where one can vote and his vote will be counted and not a place where losing politicians will just use that as a point where one can buy votes…” Lacierda explained. –Aytch S. de la Cruz, Daily Tribune