Palace call for Senate abolition slammed

Senators crossed party lines yesterday to condemn the call of Malacañang to abolish the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Francis Pangilinan and Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. lashed out at the Palace and the House of Representatives for ganging up on the Senate for its apparent failure to pass legislation needed to shore up the country’s economy and for the stalemate over the proposed national budget for 2006.

"The hawks in the Palace cannot accept a Senate that refuses to be subservient to their designs, hence their call for its abolition," Pangilinan told The STAR in a text message.

He added that abolishing the Senate is "the Palace’s way of silencing their critics and throwing the principle of check and balance out of the window, to the detriment of good governance."

At Malacañang, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye warned senators "that Filipinos will be the ultimate judge of their lackluster performance often marked with selfish interests and destructive politics that obstruct government efforts to strengthen the economy."

Pangilinan urged President Arroyo to reject "these extremists’ views" and listen instead to the voice of sobriety and moderation in her Cabinet.

Pimentel branded the move by Malacañang and the House as a ploy to hide their responsibility for the failure to pass needed legislation, including the 2006 national budget.

Opposition Sen. Sergio Osmeña III threatened to expose another anomaly involving Mrs. Arroyo’s manipulation of the 2006 budget.

"We will give a full briefing on the budget scam next week," Osmeña said, but refused to elaborate.

The senators were reacting to Bunye’s statements over the weekend that the Senate’s failure to act on the budget and several other pieces of legislation affected efforts by the administration to improve the country’s economy.

What earned the ire of the senators was Bunye’s claim that the Senate gridlock is the "clearest and best reason" for Mrs. Arroyo’s call to replace the current US-style presidential system with a parliamentary form of government — thereby having a unicameral system and effectively abolishing the Senate.

However, Pimentel said the Palace and House are largely to blame for Congress’ failure to pass the P1.053-trillion budget before it adjourned last June 8.

He claimed Malacañang and the House connived in delaying the passage of the budget and accused both of outright deception for trying to portray the Senate as the "villain" and calling for its abolition.

Pimentel also criticized the President for showing more interest in having the 2005 national budget reenacted, than in helping resolve the Senate-House impasse on the budget bill.

He said this only reinforced suspicion that Mrs. Arroyo has an ulterior motive in not having the new budget passed.

Pimentel said the bicameral conference panel on the budget convened with an ominous warning from the President that she would veto the budget bill if the cuts made by the Senate were not restored. She also ruled out any suggestion for a special session to give the panel more time to reconcile the Senate and House versions of the bill, he added.

Senators agreed with Pimentel, who said Mrs. Arroyo showed lack of concern for the speedy deliberations and passage of the 2006 general appropriations bill by submitting it to Congress only on Aug. 25 last year instead of a month earlier to avoid any delays, as advised by congressional leaders.

"The budget bill got stuck in the House for eight months but neither the President nor Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. cracked the whip on their congressional allies to solve the problem of lack of quorum in the committee on appropriations, which severely derailed the deliberations on the measure," Pimentel said.

Consequently, the budget bill was approved and transmitted by the House to the Senate only in the third week of April this year instead of mid-November last year.

"So if the national budget was not passed, it was their fault (and) not the Senate’s," Pimentel said.

He refuted allegations by the Palace and pro-administration congressmen that the senators acted unreasonably by scrapping certain budget items like the P3 billion Kilos Asenso Fund and the P3.69 billion Kalayaan Barangay Fund, reducing the budget allocations of certain departments and agencies and realigning a huge portion of the excised funds to "needy" agencies.

Pimentel argued that the Senate decided on the budget cutbacks and realignments with the public interest in mind.

"The Senate refused to go the way of the House, which passed the Palace-crafted appropriations measure almost intact," he said.

While it is true that the number of bills approved by the Senate was far from impressive, Pimentel said its failure to pass most of the legislative measures emanating from the House would not harm the nation since the bulk of them are bills of local application.

These bills referred to those seeking to change the names of barangays, hospitals and schools, a task better left to local government units, he said.

"It’s true that we were able to approve only small number of bills. On a scale of one to ten, in terms of legislative output, the Senate should be rated six. But when it comes to investigation, which is an equally important task of the Senate, perhaps we deserve a rating of nine," Pimentel said.

Out of seven bills the Senate prioritized when they went back to regular session last May, only the Senate version of the budget bill and one other bill was passed.

The repeal of the death penalty law was initially not on the agenda until it was certified urgent by the Palace.

He believes that the people generally appreciate the Senate’s job of investigating anomalies and checking the performance of the executive branch — a task that the House has left undone.

No distractions, please

Bunye said the executive branch will not be distracted by the Senate’s incessant politicking but instead "continue to concentrate on the business of the nation, especially in further shoring up the economy to boost investments and jobs, improve education, feed the hungry, heal the sick and shelter those in need."

"We leave it to the people to render the judgment of history over the Senate’s performance," Bunye said.

He added that administration "will not be sidetracked by political poison and the degenerated system that the people now want to change," apparently referring to the ongoing people’s initiative campaign to amend the Constitution.

Bunye said while "institutional harmony is an ideal goal," referring to relations between the Palace, the Senate and the House, "selfish personal interest often gets in the way."

Relations between the Palace and senators were strained in July last year when outgoing Senate President Franklin Drilon called on Mrs. Arroyo to step down over her alleged cheating in the 2004 presidential elections.

Presidential Adviser on Political Affairs Gabriel Claudio, over the weekend, said that before Congress adjourned last Thursday, the House was able to pass 71 measures of national importance, including the rationalization of the fiscal incentives and bio-fuels act, most of which were agreed upon as urgent bills by the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita earlier said the senators’ repeated stonewalling over convening Congress into a constituent assembly was meant to prevent the Senate from being abolished.

The administration is simultaneously pushing for constituent assembly and the people’s initiative as the two most expeditious modes to change the Charter in order to shift the current form of government, lift restrictive economic provisions and implement judicial economic reforms.

The Palace officials’ increasingly strong statements against senators in the past several days are apparently connected to the administration’s timetable to implement Charter change and form an interim parliament this year, and hold full parliamentary elections next year.

The initial plan was to hold a plebiscite this month on the proposed amendment and shift the form of government in July. However, the two chambers failed to agree to convene into a constituent assembly as planned last April.

Meddling to blame

Deputy Minority Leader Rolex Suplico blamed Mrs. Arroyo for the Senate-House impasse on the 2006 national budget.

He said the bicameral conference on the budget collapsed Monday last week when the President "meddled" with the conferees by telling the House contingent to fight for keeping her pork barrel funds.

By meddling in the budget conference, Suplico said Mrs. Arroyo violated the constitutional principles on the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches, and on the system of checks and balances.

He said these principles are strictly observed in a presidential system "to prevent the concentration of power in one branch of government."

Suplico added that the President has sabotaged the legislative process by telling the House panel to insist on her budget proposal.

He pointed out that before the alleged presidential meddling, the Senate-House budget conferees were inching their way to restoring some funds senators have cut, starting with P2.6 billion that they allocated for additional school buildings.

The additional funds for classrooms will no longer be available under the reenacted 2005 budget, Suplico said.

Albay Rep. Joey Salceda, appropriations committee chairman and head of the House contingent in the budget conference, blamed "too much bad blood between the President and senators" for the budget impasse.

"In times like this, you would know who really loves the country - an intransigent President Arroyo, a belligerent Senate or a subservient House," he said.

Salceda said Congress’ failure to approve the 2006 budget meant missed opportunities for growth, but noted that the continued use of the much lower, P907-billion 2005 budget has its advantages.

"It means a lower budget deficit (of about P25 billion, since the 2005 outlay is about P100 billion lower than the proposed 2006 budget). We might even be able to wipe out that deficit," Salceda said.

The continued use of last year’s outlay also means that congressmen would not be able to avail themselves of a 50 percent increase in pork barrel funds, a decision they made before approving the 2006 budget proposal in April.