OUR latest report looks at the the results of a global survey on the state of budget transparency and accountability, with special focus on the Philippines.
Tomorrow, 24 Jan. 2013, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) will release the Philippine Report of the Open Budget Survey (OBS) 2012.
The OBS is produced every two years by the U.S.-based International Budget Partnership (IBP), in collaboration with research and civil-society groups across the world. The PCIJ has served as country researcher for the Philippines since 2006.
In the 2012 Survey, the Philippines’ score in the Open Budget Index (OBI) dropped to 48 or seven points down from 55 (out of the possible 100) in 2010.
On the upside, the Aquino government has indeed followed through with transparency reforms specific to how public funds are being managed. The downside: These have been proved wanting as a global report now reveals that Filipinos continue to be denied full access to budget information and documents.
The latest figure is a throwback to the Philippines’ score in 2008: exactly 48. This only means that the Aquino government, just like the Arroyo administration, has made it harder for citizens to get information on how public officials and agencies are spending taxpayers’ money.
A score of 48 remains above the global average of 43 and the average of 39 in the East Asia and Pacific region. But 48 is still not good news: It has dragged the Philippines into the roster of 77 countries – out of the 100 countries surveyed that are home to half the world’s population – that fail to meet basic standards of budget transparency.
Despite the Philippines’ low score, however, the OBS cites some improvement and promising practices in the country in terms of budget oversight and citizen engagement.
IBP also notes that with a score of 48 out of 100, the Philippine government has the potential to greatly expand transparency by introducing a number of short-term and medium-term measures, some of which can be achieved at almost no cost on public coffers.
The House of Representatives on Tuesday failed again to tackle the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill despite assurances given by Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. to the bill’s authors that their sponsorship speeches will be allowed that day.
The FOI bill was on the official business of the House, and the sponsorship speeches of six lawmaker-authors had been lined up for the day.
That was supposedly until Davao del Sur Rep. Marc Douglas Cagas IV threatened to question the lack of quorum, if his motion was not heard.
Cagas, a two-term congressman who is running for governor of his province, had asked the House to stop sending to the congressional archive a law that President Aquino had signed creating the new province of Davao Occidental. The new province was formed with five towns carved out of Davao del Sur.
The FOI bill’s authors said they were completely surprised by Cagas’s motion.
“It was like an asteroid that fell from nowhere and hit us,” said Akbayan Party-list Rep. Walden Bello.
Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat said Cagas’s motion was totally “out of the radar” of the FOI bill’s authors.
But the FOI advocates were the most disappointed. When the session was suspended without any explanations given by the majority, about a hundred members of the Right to Know, Right Now! Coalition rose from their seats in the gallery and altogether made the thumbs-down sign for all the lawmakers to see. In silence for about five minutes, the Coalition members stood at the gallery flashing the thumbs-down sign at the lawmakers.
Rep. Cagas’s father Douglas is the incumbent governor of Davao del Sur. The young Cagas, a minority lawmaker affiliated with the Nacionalista Party, is running against his clan’s long-time rival Claude Bautista. The elder Cagas, meanwhile, is running for mayor of Digos City against re-electionist mayor Joseph Peñas. The Commission on Elections has declared Davao del Sur as an “area of concern.”
Rep.Cagas was one of 117 House members who signed in July 2012 a statement of commitment to pass the FOI bill, on initiative of Rep. Bello.
It was only last week, on Jan. 14, 2013, when President Aquino signed into law Republic Act No. 10360 creating the province of Davao Occidental. The law’s signing was reported in the newspapers only this Tuesday.
But according to Rappler’s Miriam Grace Go, the bill’s proponents had initially asked that the law be submitted to a plebiscite in time for the May 2013 elections, but the Senate approved the bill only in October 2012.
The law that Aquino signed provides for a plebiscite to be conducted by the Comelec within 60 days from the effectivity of Davao Occidental’s charter, “or within two months from Feb. 5.” That date would fall right smack in the middle of the campaign period for the May 2013 elections.
The law provides, too, that “the first set of officials of the Province of Davao Occidental will be elected in the next national and local elections following the effectivity of this Charter,” Rappler reported.
Yet because the election period has commenced, the Comelec had decided to postpone the plebiscite for Davao Occidental and the election of a representative for the newly created congressional district of Cabanatuan City, to after May 2013.
Deputy Majority Leader Bolet Banal said that the House leaders have had to suspend Tuesday’s session at 5:20 p.m. because there was indeed no quorum at the House. The chamber thus failed to tackle the FOI bill even as he showed the day’s order of business with a list of six lawmakers scheduled to deliver sponsorship speeches.
Banal said he and his colleagues had counted at most 114 lawmakers present at the session hall and at the lawmakers’ lounge, or 30 short of the 144 required to achieve a quorum in the 287-member chamber.
Deputy Speaker Lorenzo Tanada III said he and the other FOI bill authors tried to convince Cagas to drop his quorum call but Cagas would not budge. In fact, according to Tanada, Cagas had sad he would question the lack of a quorum again on Wednesday, if the House will not give in to his motion.
According to Tanada, the only way to get the FOI bill sponsored and tackled in plenary is to have a quorum on Wednesday.
Baguilat said it is, in fact, the obligation of all House members to attend all session days, and that perhaps Speaker Belmonte should now “authorize” or compel all House members to attend the next session days.
Interviewed by reporters, Tanada called Cagas’s concern “parochial.” Another lawmaker lamented Cagas’s quorum call ploy to push his motion on Davao Occidental a case of “a congressman holding the FOI hostage to a personal, political concern.”
But by all indications, Cagas’s problem – now also a problem for the FOI bill – may be less parochial than it is political. By all indications, too, it is bad politics with bad timing, courtesy no less of President Aquino, who signed the law creating Davao Occidental just as the election period had already started.
Meanwhile, Aquino has chosen to ignore calls for him to certify to the urgency of the FOI bill. He flies to Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday to attend the World Economic Forum saying zilch and doing nothing as yet to move the FOI bill into law in the last nine — now seven — session days before the 15th Congress adjourns on Feb. 8 for the May 2013 elections.
PROPONENTS OF THE Freedom of Information (FOI) bill are still hoping for a fastbreak for the long-delayed measure as Congress resumed session with only eight days to go before the chamber goes on an extended election break.
Deputy Speaker Erin Tanada, one of the principal authors of the bill, said Speaker Feliciano Belmonte had not expressed any apprehension or opposition over the measure in a meeting prior to the session. Tanada said the Speaker said the FOI’s fate would now depend on whether the bill’s proponents could muster a quorum when the bill comes to a vote. Tanada takes this to mean that the Speaker is in support of the measure that has remained stuck in Congress for the last 14 years.
In fact, Tanada said he is hoping that the measure could be passed on second reading by next week, with barely enough time for a third and final reading before Feb. 8, when Congress goes on extended break.
The Senate had passed its version of the FOI on third and final reading last year.
The House Rules Committee had committed to have the measure brought before the floor today through a sponsorship speech by House Public Information chairman Ben Evardone.
Rep. Walden Bello of the Akbayan Party-List says FOI proponents are confident that the measure has enough support on the floor. Bello pointed out that 117 legislators had signed a statement of support for the FOI late last year, when the measure was still stuck at the committee level. Bello says they are confident that the bill would still have the support of these same Congressmen.
However, Bello acknowledged that their cautious optimism is premised on the idea that no one tries to delay proceedings on the House floor through procedures or technicalities. With only eight days to go before the break, FOI advocates have been counting the days with a mixture of dread and realistic optimism.
Tanada said there are a few more potentially contentious issues that would likely be discussed and debated on in the session floor. These include the Right of Reply provision; provisions on exemptions due to national security concerns, executive privilege, and a proposal to include the private sector in the FOI.
LOVE your country and love the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill?
If you do, perhaps you may want to attend the plenary session at 4 p.m. today, Tuesday, of the House of Representatives, Old Batasang Pambansa Complex in Diliman, Quezon City.
Barring further delaying ploys by some lawmakers, the FOI bill is scheduled to be discussed at the House today, starting with a sponsorship speech by Committee on Public Information chairman Rep. Ben Evardone, and hopefully thereafter, quickly, plenary debate may ensue.
Meanwhile, the ranks of FOI advocates continued to grow, with more civil society organizations and leaders speaking up for the immediate passage of the bill in the 15th Congress.
The following organizations have added their voices to the clamor for the FOI bill to pass into law in the last eight session days until Feb.8, when Congress adjourns again for the May 2013 elections.
* Speaking for the Action for Economic Reforms, a lead civil society group in the successful campaign for the sin tax reform, senior economist Jo-Ann Latuja called on Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. to “facilitate the passage of FOI in the same way that he instructed Congress to overwhelmingly approve the Abaya sin tax bill in Congress.” The FOI bill, she said, will “help the effective enforcement of the sin tax bill.”
* Dr. Sylvia Estrada Claudio of Likhaan, a lead civil society group that helped in the passage of the reproductive health (RH) law, said that access to information by having the law on FOI is also crucial for the implementation of the RH law.
“The RH law is about giving the people, especially the women, a choice. People can make correct choices or will be aware of the consequences of their choices if information is made available to them,” she said.
According to Claudio, the FOI bill “promotes a culture of openness or transparency in the bureaucracy, which in turn, will benefit citizens who wish to get information and education related to RH from the government.”
* Ms Cielo Magno, executive director of Bantay Kita, a national civil society coalition made up of more than 80 organizations that monitor revenues in the extractive industries and which is represented in the multi-stakeholder group for the Philippine Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), said that a law on freedom of information is “a necessary component of EITI, and it is the key to the EITI’s success.”
The EITI international community, she said, will laud a law on access to information, which “will complement EITI.”
Earlier, many other major civil society groups have issued separate statements exhorting Belmonte and House leaders to assure quick passage of the FOI bill in the 15th Congress.
They include the FOI Youth Initiative of 68 student councils and youth organizations; a group of professors, deans, and a university president from various colleges and universities; the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ social action arm NASSA-JP; the Makati Business Club through its executive director Peter Angelo V. Perfecto; a group of 10 Netizens and bloggers; the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines; the Kapisanan ng mga Brokaster sa Pilipinas; and the Philippine Press Institute.
This, according to members of the Right to Know Right Now Coalition, is the crime that Speaker Feliciano Belmonte and Majority Floor Leader Neptali Gonzalez III should be held accountable after Congress again failed to tackle the Freedom of Information bill.
In a statement released to the media after coalition members walked out of today’s Congress session, the coalition said it was holding the House leadership primarily responsible if the FOI again fails to make it through the legislative mill.
Coalition lead convenor Nepomuceno Malaluan said there was more than enough time for Congress to tackle the bill if only the House leadership committed itself to exercise true transparency and accountability. For example, Malaluan said that even without an outright endorsement by President Benigno S. Aquino III of the bill, the chamber was well within its rights to mark the bill as urgent.
Malaluan said that so far, Congress has only exhibited a clear “pattern of delays” that betrays the true position of Congress when it comes to transparency.
The Coalition statement follows:
HOUSE FAILS THE PEOPLE YET AGAIN
We express our indignation over the House leadership’s lack of responsiveness on the FOI bill.
We came to the session today anticipating the sponsorship of the FOI committee report, only to be frustrated again with its non-inclusion in the Order of Business.
The Committee Report has been referred to the Rules Committee in the session last December 18 yet, and given the lack of material time for the bill’s consideration, we were expecting that the House leadership would not let a session day pass that the FOI bill is not tackled.
Today’s non-inclusion of the FOI bill in the Order of Business, even for just its sponsorship, is just the latest in the pattern of delays that has beset the FOI bill in the 15th Congress.
Should the FOI bill meet a redux of its tragic fate in the 14th Congress, the members of the Right to Know, Right Now! Coalition would have no choice but to hold Speaker Belmonte and Majority Leader Gonzalez responsible for command negligence.
It will be recalled that Rep. Ben Evardone, chair of the House Committee on Public Information, had on several instances earlier reneged on his commitment to hold committee hearings on the FOI bill.
That early, FOI advocates have sought Belmonte’s intervention and action, but he chose only to ignore, or play ignorant and indifferent to our appeals. As Evardone hemmed and hawed, legislators in favor of the FOI bill launched an initiative to use Rule IX, Section 37, par. 1 of the Rules of the House of Representatives, which states:
“Regular and Special Meetings. The committees shall hold regular meetings at least twice a month. Special meetings may be held by the committee which may be called by the chairperson or by one-fourth (1/4) of its Members. Provided, that the Members shall be notified in writing and, as far as practicable, through electronic mail indicating therein the date, time, place and agenda of the meeting.”
Led by Akbayan Representatives Walden Bello and Kaka Bag-ao, the group was able to secure the signatures of more than the eight Committee members needed to put the rule in effect.
Belmonte, however, prevailed upon the group to allow Evardone to call the hearing instead, which allowed Evardone to further delay committee action.
Belmonte could make up for lost time by acting decisively on the FOI bill on te FOI bill in the nine session days beginning today. Allowing its sponsorship today would have been an indication of a new resolve on FOI.
Speaker Belmonte has failed us again.
Still, consistent with our continuing demand and assertion of our right to information, we will continue to closely monitor the House action on FOI up to the last session day on February 6.
