- Office of the Minority Leader Edcel C. Lagman
- 13 August 2010
- 0918-9120137 / 0196-6406737
IT’S ‘TREASON’ TO KILL BILLS
DUE TO MALACAÑANG’S CUE
“Legislation is the exclusive domain of the Congress, not the turf of the President.”
Minority Leader Edcel C. Lagman underscored this plenary power of the legislature as he urged the leadership of the House of Representatives to prioritize the consideration and approval of more than a dozen bills seeking the deferment of the barangay polls despite President Benigno Aquino’s wanting the election to push through this October.
“It is treason against the House for one to advocate killing bills just because Malacañang does not favor their enactment”, Lagman added.
Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales was quoted to have said that, “If the President has already announced that he wants it (barangay elections) to push through, why do we have to give it (bills seeking the postponement) priority when the President can also veto it after all.”
According to Lagman “an outright surrender to the wishes of the President just because he has the veto power is a defeatist attitude even as it abdicates the power of the Congress to legislate.”
The Minority Leader also said, “if need be, the Congress can exercise its power to override a presidential veto.”
Lagman also stated that if congressional action should await “the cue from Malacañang, then legislation would be temporized and legislative initiative stalled.”
“We do not ask the President to be a co-author of our bills”, Lagman said.
Lagman filed the first bill (House Bill No. 104) in the 15th Congress postponing the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections to October 2012.
Lagman’s bill is anchored on the following grounds:
(a) to prevent shortly after the national elections further countrywide divisiveness traditionally engendered by the barangay elections; and
(b) to allow the realignment of more than P3-B earmarked for the October 2010 village polls to basic social services and infrastructure development.
Lagman also said that postponing the barangay elections by two years or to October 2012 would confer a 5-year term to barangay officials who were elected in 2007 to align with the consensus in previous Congresses proposing to fix the terms of barangay officials to five years.
The Bicol solon said that since both the committee on suffrage and electoral reforms and the committee on local government have been constituted, said committees can immediately act on the various bills resetting the barangay elections and refer them for plenary consideration in order to inform the COMELEC and the public on the eventual congressional action.