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CONGRESS
leaders aired a bipartisan plea for better public
understanding of the importance of foreign travels that
lawmakers undertake as part of legislative duties, amid
media’s propensity to label them as mere “junkets” or
pleasure trips at the government’s expense.
Opposition Senate President Manuel Villar and
administration Speaker Prospero Nograles of the House of
Representatives stressed this at the formal launching of
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel’s latest book,
Junketing: Senatorial Style at the Senate-GSIS
Building Thursday.
In brief
speeches, Villar and Nograles voiced hopes that the
278-page book authored by Pimentel will greatly help the
public appreciate the value of foreign trips in
broadening the horizons of legislators and in fostering
friendship and mutual cooperation with their
counterparts from various countries of the world in
solving common problems that afflict humanity.
“There
is always negative commentary whenever members of
Congress go on official mission abroad. They are often
criticized. But it is important for us to gather fresh
ideas and learn from the experiences of other countries
that are far more advanced than the
Philippines.
And I have no doubt that Pimentel’s book will be of
great help in correcting these misimpressions,” Villar
said at the launching.
Nograles
said the book disproves the prevailing notion that
overseas travels of members of Congress are just a waste
of taxpayers’ money. “It also serves as a guide and
inspiration to his legislative peers on how to maximize
the beneficial use of these trips, expensive as they
are, and how to inform the public on what they have done
and achieved from these activities.”
Nograles
said Pimentel’s book should have a counterpart in the
House of Representatives and suggested that the three
most-travelled congressmen —former Speaker Jose de
Venecia, Jr. (Pangasinan), and Reps. Antonio Cuenco (Cebu
City) and Roque Ablan (Ilocos Norte)—collaborate with
each other in writing such literary piece.
The book
is a compilation of the reports on 37 overseas journeys
that Pimentel undertook as senator —mostly at the
expense of the organizations or countries that invited
him—from 2001 to 2007. Pimentel took time to submit a
written report on every conference or mission abroad
that he attended.
According to Pimentel, “foreign travels are part of a
legislator’s job. It broadens his or her legislative
horizons and makes the lawmaker less parochial. It is
abused when the legislator concerned simply goes abroad
and uses the occasion and conferences supposed to be
attended as an excuse for going on a junket at the
expense of the public till.” |
