Tuesday, January 02, 2007 Cha-cha barred important bills By Charmaine Y. Rodriguez & Rianne C. Tecson Of Sun.Star Cebu
CEBUANO members of Congress are rushing to have important bills approved or to implement projects that have been delayed, before they get busy preparing for the May elections.
Both Reps. Antonio Cuenco (Cebu City, south) and Antonio Yapha Jr. (Cebu Province, third district) admit a lot of their bills were not taken up while the 13th Congress of the House of Representatives was in session, because of the political squabbles resulting from the Charter change plan.
“Mga local bills mostly ang napagan (The local bills got derailed),” Cuenco told Sun.Star Cebu in a phone interview last night, adding that these bills involved drainage and other repair projects in various barangays in his district.
In a separate interview, Yapha said he will have to rush the building of access roads, water systems and sports complex facilities in the towns.
The two, however, barely have one month to do these.
Session resumes on Jan. 22 and will end on Feb. 22. By then, congressmen will have a few weeks left before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) imposes the ban on public works during the election period.
Delayed
At least five of Cebu’s eight lawmakers consider the conflict between the two chambers of Congress on the Charter change (Cha-cha) issue as the main cause of delay in the approval of important bills before their terms end this year.
But Rep. Clavel Asas-Martinez (Cebu, 4th district) still hopes the Senate will approve the holding of a plebiscite on the proposal creating a separate province of Cebu del Norte.
Martinez, who is on her last term, said that while they agreed to defer pushing for the bills while the Cha-cha conflict was worsening, the proposals may be taken up when Congress resumes sessions on Jan. 22.
“(At the height of the Cha-cha controversy) The speaker said we have to defer it kay magkagubot na. Considering that the Cha-cha issue has been set aside, the bills will be up for plenary discussions. More than half (of the required number) or some 145 congressmen are co-authoring the bill. Even Rep. (Juan Miguel) Mikey Arroyo signed it,” she said yesterday.
Rep. Simeon Kintanar (Cebu, 2nd) is not as optimistic.
“(If I depend on the Senate) It’s entirely hopeless,” Kintanar, who is on his last term and is seeking the creation of Cebu del Sur, said yesterday in a separate interview.
“Dili nako mo-focus ana. Hangad nalang ko sa Ginoo (I will no longer focus on that. I’ll leave that up to God),” he added.
Discouraged
Kintanar said he will no longer file additional bills, given the rate the Senate is approving measures approved by the House of Representatives.
“Maka-discourage (It’s discouraging),” he said.
Earlier, Kintanar and Reps. Antonio Yapha (Cebu, 3rd) and Nerissa Soon-Ruiz (Cebu, 6th) called for the abolition of the Senate to ensure the faster passage of bills.
Aside from wooing support for priority bills, local lawmakers are already planning alliances with political parties, with the elections just five months away.
Martinez revealed that she plans to tie up with the opposition, like Rep. Francis Escudero or the Nacionalista party.
She, however, criticized Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia’s creation of One Cebu. “Ambot niya. Di mi mokuyog niya,” she said when asked to react to the creation of Garcia’s new party.
Yapha, for his part, merely laughed off the creation of the One Cebu party. “It will never happen. Kay kanus-a pa man gyud nahiusa ang Cebu? (When has Cebu ever been one?)” he said.
‘Productive’
Kintanar said he finds no need to “go into a struggle” while the bills creating separate provinces have not been approved.
“Dili na lang ko mag-damgo ug mga problema (I have no wish to encounter more problems),” he said.
Rep. Eduardo Gullas (Cebu, first district), for his part, said that Garcia is “free and has the right to organize a party,” adding that he even created Alayon during his term as governor.
Despite having some bills left pending and projects not implemented yet, both Cuenco and Yapha said they were quite productive during the previous year.
Cuenco, chairman of the committee on foreign affairs and a member of 11 other committees, had at least three bills that were approved in 2006.
One of these, he told Sun.Star Cebu, is the bill that will change the old passport into machine-readable ones. This, he added, will be issued to applicants within the first quarter of 2007.
Although the machine-readable passports will cost twice as much as the old passport, Cuenco said it “can’t be tampered with.” It is also good for three years only.
Conscience
The committee on foreign affairs also approved Cuenco’s bill defining the Philippines’ archipelagic baselines “to conform with the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”
Cuenco said that if the House of Representatives approves this bill, the country’s baselines would now include Sabbah and the Kalayaan Island Group.
His other bill passed last year was the establishment of the Central Cebu Protected Landscape, which consolidates five previously declared protected areas in the province.
Although he had earned flak for apologizing—after voting for a constituent assembly (con-ass) in ratifying the 1987 Constitution—Cuenco said he still considers this an achievement.
“Ako tong gi-barogan. It was a conscience vote. We were misled into believing that it (con-ass) could be done, even if we didn’t have the numbers,” he said.
He also said he and other Cebuano lawmakers who are opposed to the bills creating three more provinces in Cebu succeeded in preventing those bills from taking off.
Health
The three bills on the creation of new provinces were supposed to be discussed during the Lower House’s last session day on Dec. 20, but wasn’t included in the agenda.
Yapha, for his part, said seven of his bills (either as principal author or co-author) were approved last year. Among these were the bills regulating the establishment and operations of health maintenance organizations, authorizing government hospitals to utilize all its income for maintenance and other operating expenses, controlling and eradicating rabies, and regionalizing the Department of Education payroll service division.
Sun.Star Cebu tried but failed to contact Reps. Raul del Mar (Cebu City north) and Ramon Durano VI (fifth district).
The website of the House of Representatives, however, shows that del Mar had at least five bills approved this year.
These were the bills providing for the venue of the criminal and civil action in libel cases against community journalists, publications and broadcast stations; expanding the prohibited acts of the discrimination against women; and establishing the Cebu Free Port, among others.
Proposals
Durano, for his part, filed 15 bills last year, the most important of which is the bill creating the Camotes Islands Natural Resources Management Act.
For his part, Kintanar lamented the delay in the approval of the bill converting the Cebu State College of Science and Technology into a university.
According to the House of Representatives website, the other pending bills of Kintanar are the proposal creating the Department of Information and Communications Technology and the establishment of national high schools in the towns of Moalboal and Argao.
Ruiz’s bills penalizing the illegal use of ambulances and the proposal declaring the commemoration of the Battle of Mactan a holiday are still with the Upper House.
Martinez, for her part, said the bill converting the town of Bogo into a city is also pending before the Senate.
Supporters
Like Kintanar, Yapha and Ruiz, Martinez voted for Cha-cha.
Although she expressed intentions to run for the Constitutional Convention, Martinez said she still prefers the constituent assembly (Con-ass), which she considers the “cheaper” mode of amending the Constitution.
Gullas, a lawyer, said that although both Con-con and Cha-cha are “dead,” he still believes that Article 17, Section 1 of the Constitution does not provide for the separate voting of the two chambers.
But he said he also sees the Senate’s point in pushing for separate voting.
Gullas is optimistic that his proposals for the use of English as a medium of instruction in schools, the regionalization of the payroll of public school teachers, the conversion of Carcar and Naga into cities, and the Metro Cebu Water bill will be approved by the Senate, with the pledges of support from Senate President Manuel Villar and Sens. Panfilo Lacson and Eduardo Angara.
