Author: markku

IT’S A BILL that has been sitting through the legislative wringer in the last 14 years but still there is no rush to pass the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, according to Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr.

Online news reports of remarks made by Belmonte on Tuesday dashed the hopes of advocates yet again that the FOI bill may finally sail through the House of Representatives.

It actually did on Monday at the Senate when the senators voted 17-0 to pass the chamber’s version of the FOI bill on third and final reading.

At a press conference, Belmonte was quoted by news reports as saying, “as far as we’re concerned, we’d like to see it go through the process first.”

Belmonte’s call for “process” and “plenary debate” on the bill ignores the fact that the FOI bill had been debated more than enough since 1998, or across three successive Congress terms.

Rep. Ben Evardone of Eastern Samar, chairman of the House Committee on Public Information, was scheduled to deliver his sponsorship speech of the FOI bill, which passed on a 17-3 vote of committee members on Nov. 28, 2012, or three weeks earlier.

Evardone’s sponsorship speech could have triggered the plenary debates on the measure that Belmonte cited was necessary.

FOI advocates have precisely asked President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III to certify the FOI bill as urgent, but he has not responded at all to the clamor.

Akbayan partylist Representative Walden Bello, a co-author of the bill, has remarked that, “It would help if the President were to certify it as urgent and give a speech clearly endorsing the substitute bill that contains Malacanang’s inputs.”

It is typical practice of lawmakers to rush action on bills certified urgent by the President; in the past, such bills had even passed second and third reading on the same day.

Deputy Speaker Lorenzo Tanada III, lead author of the bill, had urged House leaders to demonstrate “political will” to assure the swift passage of the bill.

But rushing action on the FOI is apparently not among Belmonte’s priorities. On Tuesday he said the bill may be submitted to a vote on second reading in January 2013 yet, or after lawmakers return from the month-long Christmas break from Dec. 22, 2012 to Jan. 20, 2013.

Atty. Nepomuceno Malaluan, co-convenor of the Right to Know, Right Now! Coalition, in post on his Twitter account could only express disgust: “House leaders via delays put ?#FOIbill in place where each could sing nograles refrain – i did my best but i guess my best wasn’t good enough.”

The FOI bill was one step shy of being enacted into law in the 14^th Congress. But Former Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr. managed to abort the House members’ final vote to ratify the bicameral conference committee report on the FOI bill. His reason: There was supposedly no quorum on the last session day of the last regular session of the 14^th Congress, even as a head count by media agencies of the lawmakers at the session hall proved otherwise.

ON FRIDAY, November 23, the nation marks the third anniversary of the Maguindanao Massacre, the worst case of election-related violence in Philippine history, and, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the single deadliest event for journalists on a day in recent world history.

The massacre claimed 58 lives, including that of 32 journalists and media workers. In their memory, as well as that of journalists across the world who had also been murdered or remain under attack, press freedom advocates and watchdogs across the globe have declared November 23 as the International Day to End Impunity.

But the quest for justice for the victims of the Maguindanao Massacre seems stuck in a long, torturous migration path, and it is most certainly, not a daang matuwid. It is a quest variably weighed down by slow and inept officials and agencies, lawyers given to excessive dilatory maneuvers, the vagaries of politics, and elections that visit every three years like a social plague.

Our latest offering is a two-part report to mark Year 3 of the Maguindanao Massacre. It unravels how this tragic story is turning more tragic by the day.

Authored by PCIJ Multimedia Director Ed Lingao, with research assistance by Mindanews Editor Carolyn O. Arguillas, the report looks at how the Ampatuans have managed to claw their way back to political and economic power, despite the Maguindanao Massacre. It focuses on two pegs:

* The sale in May 2011 by Andal Ampatuan Jr., lead respondent in the Massacre case, of eight large real properties to one of his lawyers, an apparent sweetheart deal that surprised court officials, regulators, and public prosecutors. The Ombudsman and the Commission on Audit had failed to include the eight properties in the lifestyle check and audit they had conducted, and in the freeze order that the Anti-Money Laundering Council had secured from the Court of Appeals in June 2011.

* At least 72 clan members (with Ampatuan for surname and middle name) are running for local office in the May 2013 elections, including nine as candidates of President Aquino’s Liberal Party, and 34 others as candidates of Vice President Jejomar Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance (UNA). UNA is a coalition of Binay’s PDP-Laban party and the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) party of former President Joseph Estrada.

Part 1 and Sidebar 1 of this report are now online.