Conclusion
The continuous disinterest being shown by lawmakers in the Basic Law on Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (BLBar) and the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill is killing the two critical reform measures in the 16th Congress.
Also, House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said the long line of lawmakers who want to interpellate has stretched the legislative process for the BLBar.
“The real problem here is that time is running out because several lawmakers want to interpellate,” he said. Currently, there are at least 17 lawmakers who want to interpellate the peace measure. “Also, the notion that you can get the Senate and the House to agree on a version is really an impossible dream,” Belmonte added.
Centrist Democratic Party Rep. Rufus B. Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro, the chairman of the House ad hoc committee on the Bangsamoro Basic Law, hinted at the death of the peace measure due to lack of material time, as the lower house is facing serious absenteeism problem.
No quorum, no BLBar
According to Rodriguez, the quorum problem has hounded the House since July. The BLBar aims to create the new Bangsamoro juridical entity, replacing the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
But Belmonte expressed optimism that the lower chamber can still pass the BLBar before the year ends, despite the expected continued problem on quorum. “I am still confident that the [proposed law] can still be passed by the House of Representatives. I am appealing to my colleagues to attend the sessions,” he said.
The lower chamber resumed session on Tuesday. Independent Minority Bloc Leader and Lakas Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez sought for additional time to further scrutinize the proposed law.
“Lawmakers need more time to study the measure, because we want to guarantee that what we would be passing will be legal and constitutional,” he said.
While he supports the peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Romualdez said the lawmakers need to pass a measure that is consistent with the provisions of the 1987 Constitution.
“We support peace, but any agreement should be in consonance with the Constitution and existing laws. This will help prevent a half-baked peace measure and not give false hopes,” Romualdez said.
But Party-List Rep. Rodel Batocabe of Ako Bicol, a lawyer and spokesman of the 40-man Party-List Coalition Foundation Inc., said House members should not be too preoccupied with the constitutionality issue. The “SC [Supreme Court] will interpret if a law is consistent with our Constitution.”
“Let the SC decide on the case, while we in Congress will do our work and decide whether to pass this measure or not. That is the beauty of democracy—we have coequal and independent branches of government,” Batocabe said.
House Deputy Speaker and Liberal Party Rep. Pangalian M. Balindong of Lanao del Sur said passing the peace measure is the right thing to do.
Stressing that unity is the only way to peace and inclusive growth, Balindong said the collective wisdom of Congress would lead to the passage of the BLBar.
“We should not let this rare opportunity for peace escape our hands,” said the Veteran Muslim leader, adding that in war “everybody is a loser!”
“The proposed law is one piece of legislation that would serve as a clear and strong foundation for mutual trust to grow among Filipinos of all beliefs and cultures, all longing for lasting peace,” Balindong said.
The lawmaker also said he believes that the present clash of opinions, particularly in the plenary debates and open disagreements in media and other fora, are but part and parcel of the natural processes in a democratic country like the Philippines.
“We must give due course to our democratic processes. But, in the end, I believe that Congress will pass a basic law that would preserve the integrity of the Muslim Filipinos as active participants in the development of the Filipino nation,” he said.
Balindong added that the passage of the peace measure is not just what is needed by circumstances, but the right course of action to follow.
“The 16th Congress may not be enjoying the luxury of time. But with political will, there is time to craft a lasting policy for peace to reign upon generations of Filipinos yet to be born,” the lawmaker said. “I refuse to believe that the future of peace can just be thrown to the dust bin of history by a mere lack of quorum. I have great faith in our democratic institutions.”
Government Peace Panel Chairman Miriam Coronel-Ferrer and MILF Peace Panel Chairman Mohagher Iqbal have asked President Aquino to certify as urgent the BLBar, so the lawmakers can approve the bill on second and third reading on the same day.
Iqbal urged the leadership of the 16th Congress to pass the BLBar in November or December.
“The only window of opportunity is the next deadline, if I may call it as such, which will be in November to December. After that, it is all politics that fill the air,” Iqbal said.
“I appeal to the honorable members of both chambers of Congress to rise up to the occasion and be statesmen even for one moment in the history of this country. The fate of the [BLBar] is in your hands, and history will judge you on how you dispense with the BBL,” Iqbal said.
House Bill 5811, or the BLBar, is currently under the period of interpellations in the House of Representatives.
Still no FOI
Meanwhile, when asked about the fate of the FOI bill, Belmonte has said the measure has always been on the calendar of business.
The FOI bill, which already passed the Senate and is currently awaiting plenary deliberations at the House, is pushing the people’s access to public documents.
Unluckily, the measure has not been called on the House floor because, again, the quorum is being raised always.
Members of the Makabayan bloc marked the committee-approved bill as a “watered-down” and “toothless” proposal that will not improve people’s access to information. The seven-member bloc has withdrawn its authorship of the measure.
Despite President Aquino’s “appeal” to the leaders of Congress to pass the FOI bill, the Right To Know, Right Now Coalition, which is composed of 19 organizations, also admitted that the bill will not be passed into law under the current government.
“The FOI bill is dead. We put the blame squarely on the President and the leadership of the House of Representatives,” the Right To Know, Right Now Coalition said.
Vincent Lazatin, executive director of the Transparency and Accountability Network, said President Aquino and the leaders of the lower chamber did not provide decisive support for the passage of the bill.
“From our years of campaigning for the passage of the FOI Act, this we know for certain: Without decisive support from the President and the leadership of the House of Representatives, the bill will not pass,” Lazatin said, citing the statement of the coalition.
He said the President made them believe that the daang matuwid would lead to the passage of the FOI bill.
“On at least two occasions before he took oath as President, he promised that the passage of the FOI bill will be among his administration’s priorities. Aquino is turning out to be no better than his predecessor on FOI,” he said.
In 2011 the Philippines joined the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative led by the US that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to scale up transparency, accountability and public participation.
“Now entering into the final months of his term, the Philippines remains the only one of the eight founding members of the OGP that have enacted the FOI Act. We have not seen credible proof of his [President Aquino] personal push for the measure,” Lazatin added.
Nepomuceno Malaluan, coconvener of the coalition, said while the FOI bill will again see its death—this time in the hands of President Aquino and the House leaders—the coalition’s fight for an effective, working and living FOI lives on.
“For us this fight will now take the road of FOI practice. In the past year, the coalition has already been systematizing the coordination and documentation of experience in our information requests relating to our respective advocacies,” he said.
“We will scale this up to include administrative and judicial interventions to address the problems that we thought Congress, with decisive push from the President, would address though a comprehensive and progressive legislation. In this fight, we will also engage the constitutionality mandated independent accountability institutions, such as the Civil Service Commission, the Commission on Audit (COA) and the Office of the Ombudsman.”
Malaluan said the coalition will use the FOI practice to bring to the surface the real cause why the country’s politicians have defaulted, copped out, or resisted the passage of the FOI Act all this time.
“As starting point, we are revisiting the 2007 to 2009 COA audit of the PDAF [Priority Development Assistance Fund]. We demand that the COA and the agencies that implemented the PDAF projects afford us access not just to the main audit report, but also to all the underlying paper trail to transaction that the COA has found anomalous, so that the people may fully see how we were defrauded of public funds,” he added.