Urgency, emergency

The Senate committee on public services has already endorsed its committee report on the proposed emergency powers to improve traffic bill to the Senate. (May we suggest the acronym E-PIT to roll off more trippingly on the tongue?) The counterpart House committee on transportation has not been as insistent. Chairman Cesar Sarmiento is still “consolidating position papers” he says. This is actually code for:  no clear message from the congressional leadership.

Of course. This happens to be the Speaker’s turf and the Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has gone on record to say he is unconvinced. If the administration, through  point man Secretary Arthur Tugade of the Department of Transportation (DOTr), is unable to convince this friendliest of audiences, then there really is a disconnect somewhere. At last count, the House had already conducted 10 committee hearings.

In the Senate, largely due to the initiative and grace of the committee chairperson, debates will begin when session resumes in January.

As early as the State of the Nation Address last June 30, 2016, the President had already acknowledged the need to fix the traffic situation and the need for emergency powers. Next week, we will be hitting our 6th monthsary of the declaration of urgency. But still no bill.

Hilaw? Despite the President’s certification of urgency, the Bill could not instantly go through for it was nowhere near acceptable. Glaringly, based on what they submitted, the Executive has no idea of what needs to be done. There is even a provision that speaks of decongestion and reform plans to still be formulated.

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte just signed into law the  P3.35 Trillion annual budget for 2017. But guess what? There contains virtually nothing to cover the traffic improvement projects in the emergency powers proposal. Only approximately 40 billion out of 1.275 trillion needed is actually included in the Budget. So even if the emergency powers bill were adopted, what are we going to use to fund it?

Now that its Christmas, we continue to experience the debilitating traffic and the equally debilitating impact of an inutile governmental response. Just like the illegal drug menace, this traffic scourge is the cradle of failed expectations, an assault on quality of life. It is burning holes in our pockets and through our ozone layer. Should it really be that difficult to get a bill passed through the House?

Its actually not. Well, H.B. 4144 amending the 2 year old Sin Tax Law has already passed the House. NO TRAFFIC! It was filed even after the emergency powers bill and without a Presidential certification of urgency. After 2 measly committee hearings, it has now passed the House on third reading, ready to be served up to the Senators.  And it comes with a monster majority of 176 to 30 no votes.

There is actually considerable ground to be covered in relation to this debate on  the unitary vs. multi-tiered cigarette taxing scheme this bill implicates. Negotiating the labyrinthine issues would have been easier were it not for all the mud and gore spilled by the parties involved.

Each side has seemingly staked its claim to their imagined moral high ground. Read the commentaries and the choice of words: a mighty lobby vs. a fortunate lobby? A market leader dropping market share from 90% to 70%. I don’t know what is more unbelievable: the 20% drop in market share in less than two years or the fact that the market share was so dominant as to constitute the virtual monopoly to begin with. Routine exchanges of accusations on their popular brands selling at a price per pack below vat and excise taxes combined.

Upshift vs downshift. Argument: If a single tax, because of narrow price differential, consumers will spring for the slightly more expensive foreign brand. Contra argument: if two tiered tax, the differential widens and the lower priced local brand would surely be preferred.

Big Tobacco is one of the most powerful lobbies. It routinely spends for research that turns out less than impartial. Because of giant advertising budgets, media is often pressured to abstain from critical commentary. And stories continue to fester about how they operate a railroad straight through the heart of Congress.

In columns to come, we will continue to devote our space to searching for the truth through the smoke and haze of this debate.

Need to know. Back in the day while still a member of the City Council of Manila, I would routinely move that the Presiding Officer (legendary Manila Vice Mayor Danilo Lacuna) order the Western Police District policemen to arrest absent members and produce them at the session hall whenever there was difficulty establishing a quorum. Under the express provision of the Local Government Code (both R.A. 7160 and its predecessor B.P. 337), local sanggunians were empowered to take this extraordinary step in recognition of the importance and urgency of our attendance at legislative sessions. Of course, as a collegial assembly, sanggunians required the presence of a quorum to transact business. The law was not about to stand as mute witness to how the nations’ paid elective officials would routinely welsh on their obligations.

The same imperatives apply, of course, at the National level. Hence their power, as well, to compel attendance of members. In their case, the power is inherent. It is based on the Constitution and needs no member of the National Police to enforce. The legislative repository of popular will cannot be expected realistically to fashion any manner of acceptable output without the information necessary to produce it. This is the basis for the Congressional Contempt power – if the assembly itself does not have the needed information, then recourse should be sought from those who have access to it.

In the Philippines, either civic duty was treated with more reverence in the 1930s or there may have been an epidemic of skivving. To reinforce this duty to participate in the legislative process, Congress enacted article 150 of the Revised Penal Code making it a felony to disobey summons or induce another to do so. This is the basis of the Department of Justice indictment of Secretary Leila de Lima.