Monday, June 11, 2007 Maxey: Scratch, scratch By Ram Maxey Bar None
SENATOR Mar Roxas has good reason to be angry with the 13th House of Representatives. During its final session days on June 4 to 7, the House passed into history without having approved its version of the Senate's Cheaper Medicines bill for lack of a quorum.
Roxas, along with the Senate leadership, has called on President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to order a special Congress session to act on the Senate version of the bill authored by Roxas, among other vital measures.
The proposed Cheaper Medicines bill requires amendments to the Intellectual Property Rights Law, and the Senate is waiting for the House to approve its own version on third and final reading before a bicameral conference committee can iron out the differences and reconcile the two versions.
There is no need to dwell on the importance of cheaper medicines. People's health, nay, lives depend on the availability of medicines. Everyone and his uncle know how expensive medicines are these days, yet most people in need of them have no choice but to shell out hard-earned pesos at their nearest drugstore for medicines recommended by their doctors. But for those who cannot afford such medicines, they will just have to make do with the neighborhood "quack.”
Is this lame-duck House of Representatives already a spent force drained of energy for one last hurrah as a lawmaking body? Or is the lack of quorum just a ploy that serves the interest of the drug industry which sees the Cheaper Medicines bill as a threat to its never-had-it-so-good existence?
Should Malacañang heed the call for a special session, the onus for guaranteeing a quorum falls on the shoulders of the House leadership. The last no-quorum sessions were a reflection on that leadership. Or the lack of it.
The lethal one-two punch in the House of Representatives consists of Speaker Jose de Venecia (left straight) and Majority Leader Prospero Nograles (right hook). Shades of Pacman. It would be interesting to see if the two gentlemen have the political will to produce a quorum for such a special session and crack the whip that would lead to the approval of its own version of such a very important bill.
Otherwise, three years' work in the Senate will go to naught and the incoming 14th Congress will have to start from scratch. And speaking of scratch, all it takes for the two Houses to agree on anything worthwhile is to act on the principle of "You scratch my back, I scratch yours.”
Yeah, it takes two to tango. Or, in this case, scratch. Let's just hope that there will be a lot of itchy backs in the next Congress requiring a lot of give-and-take scratching. Then perhaps this country can start lurching forward.
