DAVOS — President Aquino has appealed to the feuding senators to set aside
their money quarrel for a few days and focus on crucial legislation such as
reforms to the antimoney laundering law.
Refraining from taking sides in
the controversy over Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s cash gifts to fellow
senators, the President said his interest was in accomplishing as much as
possible in the legislative arena—given that there were a few remaining session
days in Congress.
“Our interest is that we need
these laws to be able to govern better and we don’t want to start from square
one,” Aquino told the Filipino media on the sidelines of the annual World
Economic Forum here.
Congress will go on recess in
February to give way to the campaign period for the midterm senatorial and
local elections in May.
Mr. Aquino said there were so
many pending measures awaiting prompt action. “The bottom line is if these are
not passed by the current Congress, in the next Congress you will have to go
back to the committees and go again through first, second and third readings.
(It’s) back to square one,” he said.
“So actually paguwi ko,
makikiusap ako sa ating coequal branch na puede ba tayong mag-concentrate, na
itabi muna natin yun ating personal issues. Merong issues ang bansa na
kailangang asikasuhin [So when I get back, I will appeal to our coequal
(government) branch for them to concentrate, to set aside personal issues.
There are national issues that need their attention],” he said.
Respectful tone
But Aquino said he would make
such an appeal “with a very respectful tone to a coequal branch.”
“But, again, in the last three
days (of the remaining Congress session), there are several measures that
hopefully will be passed because they really are at such an advanced stage of
creation,” he said.
Aside from the bill seeking to
strengthen the law against dirty money, Mr. Aquino cited the human rights
compensation bill as another piece of crucial legislation.
On the third amendment to the
antimoney laundering law, he said the Philippines would have to meet the
deadline set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
“We have deadlines to meet and we
don’t want to be a hindrance to our ability to really participate in the world
financial market and the furtherance of our economic objectives,” he said.
The Paris-based FATF is an
intergovernmental organization initiated by the world’s richest nations under
the G-7 group to develop cross-border policies to combat money laundering and
terror financing.
On the freedom of information
(FOI) bill, the President said it would be a tough call for him to certify it
as urgent at this stage. The bill has just come out of the committee level and
has yet to be presented for plenary debate.
Meanwhile, the controversy in the
Senate over how their funds were used continued.
Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III last
week filed Senate Resolution No. 930 urging a review of policies on the
creation of oversight committees for the purpose of cutting down on expenses
and saving taxpayer money.
Abolish oversight panels
In his resolution, Pimentel
indicated his preference for the abolition of the oversight committees, giving
their functions to the existing regular committees of the Senate.
“[There] is a need to review and
to rationalize the manner by which the Senate has been creating and budgeting
for oversight committees, not only in order to minimize internal squabbling
over Senate resources, but more importantly to help ease the Filipino
taxpayers’ burden by the more efficient use of taxpayer money,” Pimentel said
in the proposed resolution.
Oversight committees monitor the
executive branch’s implementation of laws passed by Congress.
There were 35 oversight
committees in 2012, some of them with huge budget allocations.
The General Appropriations Act of
2012 showed that aside from the congressional commission on oversight of
agricultural modernization (allocation P37.8 million), other oversight
committees with huge allocations included the congressional commission on
science and technology and engineering (P36 million); the congressional oversight
committee on labor and employment (P28.3 million); the joint congressional
power commission (P25 million), and the legislative oversight committee on the
PH-US Visiting Forces Agreement (P18.1 million).
With a report from Norman
Bordadora
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