SHEER INACTION ALSO TO BLAME

But it is not opposition from various contending parties as much as inaction that kills a bill. Lagman admits that there are proposed laws that stagnate in the House because of indolence: “Inuupuan lang (It’s just sat on).”

This is the fate that befell the Freedom of Access to Information Act, according to Nepomuceno Malaluan, executive director of Action for Economic Reforms and member of Access to Information Network. 

Despite the constitutional policy of public disclosure enunciated in Article II, Section 28 of the 1987 Constitution, and the provision in Article II, Section 7 that ensures the right of the people to information on matters of public concern, Congress has yet to come up with the implementing legislation to give teeth to the constitutional mandate. 

There are five bills pending in the House of Representatives seeking the implementation of the public’s right to know. Similar bills have been filed as early as the Eighth Congress.  Yet, says Malaluan, “we were not as vigilant in pushing for the law.”  

A noteworthy accomplishment of the 13th Congress, An Act Prohibiting the Imposition of Death Penalty in the Philippines (R.A. 9346), would have faced a similar conclusion were it not for the intervention of the executive — underscoring the influence of the administration in legislation, and in spite the constitutional dictum that all three branches of government are co-equal and separation of powers is delineated. 

Lagman, the bill’s main proponent, and other like-minded legislators, had been pushing for the abolition of the death penalty since the Eighth Congress. But the bill was ignored until President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo endorsed the measure, due largely to pressure exerted by the European Union. The bill was passed in two weeks; the bicameral conference committee finished the bill through telephone communication. Quips Lagman: “If Congress wants to fast track legislation, it can do it.”

Socioeconomic bills apparently do not merit the same speed. The Public Debt Ceiling Act, for example, has gone nowhere, even as the national government’s outstanding debt has kept rising. As of March 2007, it was already at P4 trillion. 

Presidential Decree 1177 put the debt payment beyond the purview of the General Appropriations Act, thereby ensuring automatic appropriation for debt servicing, which has eaten up as much as 50 percent of the national budget.

According to an Ateneo Macroeconomic Forum Model study, the Philippines is allotting P721.7 billion in debt service, with P340 billion as interest payments alone. This translates to an allocation of P1.98 billion per day, which, says the study, is equivalent to the building of 7,920 classrooms or 250 kilometers of roads per day. 

There are proposed bills seeking to repeal the onerous provisions of P.D. 1177 and to put a cap on expenditures for foreign-debt servicing. A similar bill was filed in the Eighth Congress, but then President Corazon Aquino vetoed it.  In the Ninth Congress, House Speaker de Venecia, in order to block the bill’s passage, promised the release of P200 million of the pork barrel to the members of the House. 

Lawmaking is a long and tedious process. The victims of martial law human rights violations have learned this the hard way, as they wait for the House of Representatives to pass the bill that would grant them compensation.  If the bill is not passed in June, it will be archived. The victims will then have to fight it out again in the 14th Congress, from the gestation period to its desired conclusion: that of being enacted into law. 

Prioritization of bills is a legislative prerogative, a political question that cannot be questioned by the executive and the courts. But the ultimate accountability, perhaps, should lie with the people who choose those who sit in Congress.