No more happy holidays!

In the Filipino tradition of celebrating Christmas, this is observed through generous gift giving. The most typical corporate gift I got this Christmas, as usual, is a personal planner. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. In fact, I appreciate such useful and functional planners.

But the personal planner that I got from Singapore Airlines stood out from the rest. While leafing through its pages, I read an entry for Public Holidays 2011. Interestingly, it has a list of all the public holidays in the countries where Singapore Airlines obviously has international flight operations.

It was a good reference material for travelers to be apprised of official holidays in the country-destinations. But it also provided a good background for me to check against gripes aired by foreign business groups in the Philippines about having supposedly too many public holidays here.

Seven foreign chambers of commerce had issued a report earlier last week that complained about frequent holidays in the Philippines. They claimed such were discouraging many potential investors because of overtime pays that add to their operating costs.

Under our country’s labor laws, employees who are required to report to work on legal holidays must be paid double. On the other hand, daily wage earners lose income if there is official holiday following the no work, no pay labor rule. For the regular salaried workers who opt to spend the public holiday, they will still get paid without actually rendering service. So these foreign employers are complaining that such situation does not promote nor increase productivity at all.

That supposed study by foreign chambers noted Filipino workers enjoyed 21 public holidays for this year alone. They cited that Vietnam has only nine public holidays, 11 for Singapore, and 12 for Taiwan.

But it should be remembered that we had two national elections held this year which were also declared public holidays all over the country. This was on May 10 for the presidential elections and during the barangay and Sangguning Kabataan elections on Oct. 25. Hence, it should not have been included in their count as these were not regular public holidays.

Foreign business groups also took issue with the perceived fickle and unpredictable nature of holiday declarations in the Philippines. They rued these holidays were sometimes made on very short notice, disrupting work schedules, and increasing corporate costs. Much of the blame pointed to the so-called “holiday economics” that was made into law by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo under RA 9492.

This law allowed a “movable” holiday to allow Filipino families to spend three days of long weekend and help promote domestic tourism. If it falls on the middle of the week, the holiday is observed on the Monday of that week. If the holiday falls on a Sunday, it will be observed on the Monday that follows. Provided, however, that for “movable holidays” the President was mandated by RA 9492 to issue a Proclamation at least six months prior to the holiday concerned, the specific date shall be declared as a non-working day.

Under RA 9492, only the following holidays are observed on the day they fall on: New Year’s Day (Jan. 1); Maundy Thursday and Good Friday (movable date); Christmas Day (Dec. 25); All Saints Day (Nov. 1); and for the last day of the year (Dec. 31). The rest are “movable” holidays.

In the same Singapore Airlines planner for 2011, the Philippines has 14 listed public holidays because it did not include yet the Islamic holidays now being observed in our country. Under Philippine laws, we have a total of 15 official public holidays with the latest addition of Eidul Adha. This Islamic holiday is observed as a national holiday all over the country as mandated by Republic Act 9849.

It was rather unfortunate for these foreign business groups to gripe on “holiday economics” which was not valid at all when we have more or less the same number of public holidays compared to other countries. The same planner shows that Sri Lanka has the most number of public holidays with a total of 22 for the whole year while Hong Kong has 17.

The foreign business groups raised this issue against the “holiday economics” with the assumption into office of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino. Taking into consideration their complaint, the President issued on Monday Proclamation No. 84 which the Palace claimed has effectively removed the so-called “holiday economics” policy of the previous administration.

By the way, as Senator, Mr. Aquino was one of those who voted in favor of the approval of this “holiday economics” law, as he was repeatedly reminded by former Senate colleague Joker Arroyo (no relation to ex-President Arroyo).

But how can a Presidential Proclamation repeal a Congress-approved law? Under our country’s Constitution, the President can exercise his legislative powers like imposing new tariff when Congress is not in session. But other than that, the Chief Executive could not exercise his powers to issue executive fiats that may intrude into the legislative functions of Congress like creating new holidays, new government offices, or appropriation of funds.

In President Aquino’s Proclamation 84, he has ironically added a “special holiday (for all schools)” every Feb. 25 starting next year. This is to observe the EDSA People Power Revolution anniversary to mark the event when his late mother President Corazon “Cory” Aquino was swept into office at Malacañang Palace.

President Aquino justified the removal of “holiday economics” as necessary for Filipinos to correctly observe the commemoration of the significance of an official holiday as they happen on that day in our history. Palace mouthpiece Ricky Carandang says Proclamation 84 won’t adversely affect domestic tourism. The last time I checked Alberto Lim is the Tourism Secretary.

The removal of “holiday economics” that his predecessor observed was not political, but rather a move to lessen the disruption of activities in our economy. Mr. Aquino impressed this upon Palace reporters why he won’t implement starting next year the “holiday economics” under his administration.

So starting next year, no more happy holidays in the Philippines!