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THE
House Committee on Ethics has been urged to investigate
the unethical conduct displayed by representatives of
the country’s biggest pharmaceutical companies during
the session Wednesday night which derailed the final
passage of a bill pushing for cheaper prices of
medicines.
At the
same time, party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros Baraquel of
Akbayan asked the House to declare big bad
pharmaceutical companies “persona non grata” as a result
of their representatives’ acts during the last day of
the two-day special session called by President Arroyo.
“What
[the] Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the
Philippines (PHAP) did was the height of corporate
arrogance. PHAP represents the agenda of voracious
pharmaceutical companies, none of which is even Filipino
owned, and we can’t allow PHAP to dictate what Congress
should and should not do,” Baraquel said in filing House
Resolution 1543.
The
unethical acts happened when PHAP through its members,
Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline
Philippines,
slipped a note to PDP-Laban Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. of
Makati during the plenary session, asking him to
question the quorum in an effort to derail the
deliberations on the medicine bill.
According to Laban Rep. Rolex Suplico of Iloilo, the
infuriated Locsin showed the letter to other congressmen
before proceeding to the gallery along with other
congressmen including Baraquel, party-list Rep. Loretta
Ann Rosales of Akbayan and Lakas Rep. Fernejel Biron of
Iloilo to confront the lobbyists, who they later asked
to leave the gallery.
Suplico
identified the PHAP members as lawyer Marilyn Matamis
Ocampo, corporate legal counsel of GlaxoSmithKline and
lawyer Faustina Carmen Bautista, legal affairs manager
of Pfizer.
Suplico
said that when he read the note, it said: “We
desperately need someone to question the quorum now. Can
you do it? Please confirm with Leo Wassmer.”
Wassmer
is one of the officials of PHAP, whose president is
Edwin Feist, president and general manager of Abbot
Laboratories. The PHAP, whose first vice president is
Rey Guerrero Bacarro, who is also Pfizer’s president and
country manager, is composed of 63 multinational drug
companies.
Congressmen crossed party lines to assail the drug
executives’ act with House deputy speaker Gerry
Salapuddin and Lakas Rep. Eladio Jala of Bohol moving
for the total ban of lobbyists in the House session
hall.
“That’s
a despicable and unacceptable practice. We do not
tolerate such shameless interference, thus we are
pushing for a ban from the session hall of lobby groups
to prevent recurrence of the incident,” Salapuddin said.
Locsin
explained later, in the “Karambola” daily morning
program he cohosts over DWIZ, that while the people,
including lobbyists, are allowed at the Batasan’s public
gallery, “they have no business instructing lawmakers
what to do.”
He said
people from the gallery routinely send letters to their
congressmen during ordinary deliberations, but they
should not “cross the line” as to disrupt even the
voting.
Jala,
chairman of the House Committee on Government
Enterprises, said that while lobbying is acceptable as a
means to push for certain advocacies, it should not be
done in a “shameless manner like what Pfizer did in the
House session hall.”
International aid agency Oxfam lauded the passage of the
bill on second reading as it drew poor Filipinos’
further closer to having access to quality and
affordable medicines.
“We hope
that when the House and the Senate settle on the final
version of the bill in June, it will not include
amendments that would limit Filipino’s access to
life-saving medicines,” it added.
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