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Rm. N-411, House of Representatives, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
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LAGMAN: TIME IS NOW FOR RH

Press Statements

 

  • REP. EDCEL C. LAGMAN
  • Principal Author of HB No. 4244 (Reproductive Health Bill)
  • Independent – Albay
  • 18 July 2012
  • 0916-6406741 / 0918-9201277

 

 

LAGMAN: TIME IS NOW FOR RH

 

               “Lack of time” should not be made the scapegoat for lack of political will in failing to enact the long pending reproductive health bill.

             Time is not a problem for the House of Representatives. It has always found time to fast track the approval of measures which the leadership wants enacted by the plenary in a couple of weeks.

            If the Senate has the time to vote on its counterpart RH bill, why should the House find time elusive and running out on an allied measure which has been principally nurtured in the House.

              “If there is a will, there is a way” is a truism in lawmaking.

              A case in point is the swift approval of HB No. 4146 cancelling the elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and prescribing the Presidential appointment of Officers-in-Charge (OICs).

          Another is the passage with alacrity of the Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations (GOCCs) Governance Act which is ostensibly intended to streamline appointments in and operations of GOCCs even as the innovations violate the security of tenure of incumbents and derogate the power of the Civil Service Commission, which is a constitutional body.

          Unlike the ARMM and GOCC bills which had inordinately short legislative gestation, the current RH bill and its precursors had been debated upon inside and outside the Congress for almost one and a half decades.

          If there is apparent time for Cha-Cha, which is unpopular, why should there be no time for RH when numerous and repeated surveys have documented that Filipinos want the RH bill enacted into law soonest.

          After President Benigno Aquino III has unequivocally endorsed to the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) and to Congress the RH bill (HB No. 4424) as a priority measure, the House leadership must take the bull by its horns and schedule the resumption of debates, amendments and voting within an expeditious timeframe.

           There is sufficient time from late July up to the full month of August 2012 to vote on the RH bill before the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) is set for plenary consideration in September.