Abolish the House --Malaya.com.ph ; Palace: Time to abolish Senate --Philstar.com

Abolish the House
http://www.malaya.com.ph/may29/edbaylon.htm
JB D. Baylon


In Davao a few days ago, I was engaged in intense political conversation with Tony Ajero of the Sun Star Davao and Coca-Cola system colleagues Bobby Manzano and Andrew Novera when Bobby came up with a gem of an idea: Why not just abolish the House of Representatives?

I immediately realized it was such a gem of an idea. Think about it.

Let us say that each of our 24 senators gets a salary of P100,000 a month and pork barrel of P100 million a year. That’s P28,800,000 in salaries per year plus P2.4 billion in pork barrel. Not to mention the budget for each senator’s staff.

Let us then say that each of our 220 congressmen (am not sure but I think there are in fact even more than 220 of them) each get a salary of P50,000 a month and pork barrel of P50 million a year. That’s P132,000,000 in salaries per year, plus P11,000,000,000 in pork barrel per year.

Just on these contrasting figures alone, which house of Congress should we abolish if we wished to save money?

But there actually is more logic to what I now call the "Manzano Amendment" to the 1987 Constitution. And the added logic stems from the principle of decentralization of government, and in fact strengthens it even more.

Think of it this way:

Congressmen – more properly termed Representatives – represent specific districts of our country. These districts are either part of cities or provinces, with some provinces and cities being one district by itself but most being an amalgamation of districts. This is why the province of Batanes has only one representative, it being a lone district province, while the City of Manila has at least six districts and therefore six representatives.

Provinces and cities, however, have governors and mayors. They are either friends or political enemies of the congressmen. Sometimes they are more than friends; sometimes they are even relations with the governor or mayor being the wife, husband, brother, or sister or cousin of the representation, or vice versa. In this instance the voters of a specific province in effect are giving employment to at least two members of one family. Wow.

In instances where the representative and the local government official are at loggerheads, what happens is one blocks the programs of the other. The reason is simply political survival. I need not mention examples of these because a lot that I know involve very good friends of mine. But I am sure they know who they are.

Thinking of the Manzano Amendment convinces me it is a gem, and in one fell swoop would simplify governance in the country and result in enormous efficiency in government as well as savings. The existence of representatives by district is, I am now convinced, a superfluity in the 21st Century, and doing away with them will mean we can strengthen the offices of governor and mayor who are anyway the frontlines of government service for the Filipino people.

Think of it: What additional laws do we need? If you analyze the number of laws passed by Congress, a whopping majority of these will, I suspect, involve the change of names of streets and schools and hospitals, matters that the local government through the governor or the mayor–or their boards or councils - could easily do.

On the other hand, if you did really have need for legislation, this could be initiated by the governors or mayors or their leagues, passed by their league sitting as an ad hoc legislature, and sent up to the Senate for concurrence.

But why keep the Senate and not the House? We need a Senate elected nationwide to represent the nationwide interests of the Filipino people. A nationally elected Senate provides each and every Filipino a chance to reward, or punish, a senator who is deemed to have been an utter failure. I put emphasis on the ability of each and every Filipino to extract punishment or confer reward because that is only appropriate for national level officials whose actions impact each and every one of us.

But imagine an idiot of a congressman pushing for bills that in the end hurt us all. Could all of us punish him at the polls? Of course not – because we are not electors in his district. If, by guile and and/or simple "abilidad" he is able to shower his district with manna from heaven time and again then time and again they will elect him back to the House once more to inflict damage on the rest of us.

To simplify: if during the height of the Arroyo impeachment you didn’t like the looks, thinking or guts of a Chiz Escudero or an Alan Cayetano, what could you do? Unless you were a voter in Sorsogon or Taguig-Pateros, nothing. Similarly, if you couldn’t stand Congressman Antonino or Edcel Lagman, or even Ignacio Arroyo, what could you do? Unless you were a voter in their districts, you had no choice but to suffer their presence in the House.

Abolishing the House as Bobby Manzano suggests does away with this problem, saves us billions in pork barrel and millions in salaries, and takes a layer away from the bureaucracy. It strengthens the position of governors and mayors who will now have to account fully for progress – or lack of it – in their jurisdictions.

And imagine how many bodyguards and back-up cars we immediately are rid of!

Life would be so much better indeed in a House of Representatives-free but not yet enchanted kingdom-like Republic of the Philippines!

Mabuhay ka, Bobby!


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Palace: Time to abolish Senate
By Aurea Calica
The Philippine Star 06/11/2006
www.philstar.com/philstar/News200606110401.htm


The time has come to abolish the Senate by replacing the current form of government with a single-legislature parliamentary system because the chamber has become obstructive, Malacañang said yesterday.

The Senate produced 12 bills that were signed into law by President Arroyo, a piddling effort according to two administration allies in the House of Representatives.

Deputy Majority Leader Antonio Cerilles and Rep. Exequiel Javier said the Senate’s output "caused the dismal performance of the 13th Congress."

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said the Senate failed to act on several important pieces of legislation needed for the country’s economic recovery.

"We lament the non-passage of vital reform bills, including the national budget, due to the non-cooperation and dilly-dallying displayed by the Senate," Bunye said in a statement.

He said the "gridlock caused by the Senate has hindered confidence in our economy, stunted opportunities for growth with social equity and hampered the pursuit of national security because of several key pieces of legislation that are gathering dust in the upper chamber."

Bunye said the situation "is the clearest and best" argument for Mrs. Arroyo’s call to replace the current US-style presidential system with a parliamentary form of government "for which we now have a growing momentum of public support."

Earlier, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said it was obvious that the Senate was blocking moves to adopt a parliamentary system to protect itself from being eliminated.

It is now up to the public to decide on the Senate’s fate, Ermita said.

Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. also said the Senate was a failure and should be dismantled.

He complained that dozens of bills passed by the House remained unacted on by Senate, adding that "futility and wastefulness" marked the just-concluded Second Regular Session of the 13th Congress.

"The list of bills ignored by the Senate is long. We can go on and on rattling off each title. And each one is further proof of the failure of the Senate — and of the utter futility and wastefulness of a two-house legislature," De Venecia said.

The Speaker appeared frustrated by the legislature’s failure to enact important measures and blamed this largely on "destructive politics" in the Senate.

He said the situation showed that the country should adopt a unicameral parliamentary system. "My colleagues, this system cannot continue; we have to break it, we have to dismantle it."

Mrs. Arroyo is fighting opposition efforts to force her from office over allegations that she cheated her way to victory in the May 2004 presidential election.

Drilon withdrew support from her in June last year following her admission that she had an inappropriate phone conversation with an election official during the vote count. But she denied rigging the outcome.

Mrs. Arroyo accuses the opposition of shifting the battle to the Senate after she successfully fought off an impeachment bid in the House last September.

She charged that Drilon and other senators critical of her were trying to weaken her with a series of investigations purportedly aimed at uncovering corruption.

The Senate investigations are meant to help legislators craft laws, but Mrs. Arroyo claimed they are actually "in aid of destabilization."

The President earlier assailed the Senate for trimming certain appropriations from her administration’s budget proposal for the year, saying it would cripple economic development programs as well as those meant to ease the plight of the poor.

Among the measures that remained pending in the Senate were: the alternative fuels bill, the proposed measures on automated elections, the anti-terror bill, the tax reduction for low-income earners, amendments to the Bases Conversion Development Authority Act and eco-zone incentives, rationalization of fiscal incentives, anti-smuggling, tourism policy and the extension of Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund.

These bills were identified as priority measures during a recent meeting of the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council.


Legislation or obstruction?


In a joint statement, Cerilles and Javier deplored the Senate’s "obstructionist politics" which they said had made Congress "irrelevant."

"When you speak of Congress, you refer to both the Senate and the House. It is lamentable that while the House has diligently worked to act on and pass numerous important local and national bills, these measures only end up stranded in the Senate," Cerilles said.

Cerilles, of Zamboanga del Sur, added the senators were "more interested in looking for other matters outside of the appropriations hearings," resulting in the failure to pass the 2006 national budget.

"Their hearings were more like a probe than a budget hearing. Obviously, the House was able to finish the budget long before the senators wrapped up their budget discussions," the former environment secretary observed.

Senators "gave too much focus to investigations which, however, have not yielded any remedial legislation at all. I concur with the Palace that the delay or non-approval of the budget can be blamed on senators," Cerilles said.

He and Javier pointed out that legislating is lawmakers’ "primary duty."

"With the Senate’s failures, the overall performance of the 13th Congress is dismal. Their concentration on investigations and politicking resulted in no legislation at all," Javier said.

"This proves our point that the much-publicized Senate investigations were not in aid of legislation but of the oust-PGMA variety and grandstanding with an eye for the 2007 elections," Javier reiterated.

According to De Venecia, the House approved 802 bills that ended up stalled in the Senate.

In contrast, Majority Leader Prospero Nograles said the House under De Venecia’s leadership either passed or adopted 25 percent or 1,732 of the 6,900 bills filed, surpassing its record in the Eighth to the 12th Congresses.

Senators had also agreed at the economic council meeting to sit down with members of the House to try to resolve the House-Senate impasse on the bid to amend the Constitution.

But the supposed "breakthrough" quickly dampened as senators and House members failed to reach any agreement on the proposed constitutional amendments.

The administration and its allies in the House are hinging on the people’s initiative because of the deadlock.

De Venecia, one of the leading advocates of a parliamentary system, has not given up on his chamber’s proposal that Congress convene as a constituent assembly to make necessary amendments to the Constitution.

"With a new Senate leadership in place this July, we will continue to reach out to the other chamber. We can have another bicameral conference to revive discussion on constituent assembly in late July or early August," he said following the sine die adjournment of session of Congress Thursday night.

Under a 2004 term sharing agreement, Sen. Manuel Villar takes over the Senate presidency from Franklin Drilon when the Third Regular Session of the 13th Congress begins on July 24.

"Our collective effort to call a constituent assembly to amend the Constitution has fallen on barren ground. That is why the majority coalition in the House is now shifting its support to the people’s initiative launched by people’s organizations and the 1.7-million strong Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP)," he said.

ULAP groups governors, mayors and other local officials.

Senators led by Drilon disagree with the House on how to amend the Constitution. They prefer amendments drafted by a constitutional convention made up of elected delegates.

They argue that amendments proposed by a constituent assembly would appear self-serving because lawmakers would make up the body.

A people’s initiative being pushed by Arroyo allies could skirt the Senate-House impasse.

The two sides were supposed to resolve their differences through a series of talks. Their representatives have had two meetings but have reached no agreements.

The Senate said it would only cooperate on amendments concerning economic reform and not on political reform, including the move to change the country’s form of government.

The people’s initiative has also run into opposition from senators, who are questioning its legality. — With Delon Porcalla