Contact Details

Rm. N-411, House of Representatives, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
+63 2 931 5497, +63 2 931 5001 local 7370

Press Statements
PRESS STATEMENT
15 February 2009

The foot-dragging by the Philippine executive department in negotiating with American authorities the transfer of Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith to a Philippine penal facility is bound to create a constitutional crisis.

The delay in complying with the order of the Supreme Court that forthwith the Romulo-Kenney agreement must be renegotiated subverts the judicial supremacy of the highest tribunal.

The Romulo-Kenney agreement allowed the detention of Smith in the American Embassy pending appeal of his conviction for rape.

The Supreme Court ruled that this arrangement is repugnant to the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which provides that an American military personnel charged with a crime before a Philippine court has to be detained in a facility under Philippine authorities and the only condition is that the facility must be agreed upon by representatives of the Philippine and American governments.

The custody of Smith cannot depend on the self-serving option of the American authorities because this would impair the constitutional power of judicial review of the Supreme Court.

The Philippine government cannot just stand by and wait until the Americans are “ready to talk” because they may capriciously refuse to talk or deliberately procrastinate to renegotiate.

Press Statements

COMMENTS ON SC RULING RE:
VFA AND CORPORAL SMITH


•      On the whole, both the majority and dissenting opinions uphold Philippine sovereignty and jurisdiction over criminally errant American soldiers in the Philippines, and fortifies the feminist movement in the country.

•      Both the majority and dissenting opinions sustain the position that pending Smith’s appeal before the Court of Appeals from his conviction by the RTC of Makati, he should be confined in a facility under Philippine authorities. The difference is that the majority decision holds in abeyance the transfer of Smith from the US Embassy to a Philippine penitentiary or detention center pending renegotiation of the Romulo-Kenney agreement placing Smith under American authorities in the US Embassy. The order for renegotiation gives recognition to the VFA provision that the choice of the detention facility under Philippine authorities should be agreed upon by appropriate Philippine and American representatives. On the other hand, the minority decision orders the immediate transfer of Smith to the National Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa.

•     The majority decision does not impose a deadline on when the renegotiation should be started and completed, although it orders that the renegotiation be done “forthwith”. In reality, the eventual transfer of Smith can be expeditious or sluggish depending on the contingencies and exigencies of diplomacy.

•      Another major difference is that the majority decision upholds the constitutionality of the VFA as an implementation of the RP-US Mutual Defense Treaty. The minority decision strikes down the VFA as unconstitutional because while the Philippines, through the Senate, ratified it as a treaty, the United States does not accord it the status of a treaty. I agree with Chief Justice Reynato Puno that it is lamentable that it is the Philippines itself which derogates its parity as a sovereign state with the United States.

Press Statements

PRESS STATEMENT
06 February 2009

Rep. Roilo Golez in his vain attempt to demonize the RH bill has been presenting to his colleagues misleading, deceptive, unreliable, underreported and unofficial data.        

In order to portray that family planning and contraceptive use have no correlation to maternal mortality and infant deaths and that the country’s current maternal and infant mortality ratios are not alarming, Golez is guilty of the following flawed methodologies:

1.      He “cherry-picks” his statistics from the Department of Reproductive Health and Research of the WHO on contraceptive prevalence rates (CPR) of different countries in relation to their respective population growth rates (PGR) without disclosing the vast variances in base years of the two indicators, so much so that no sound and logical statistical conclusion can be established.

Press Statements

The persistent negative reports that 11 Filipino women die daily of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth underscore the critical immediacy of enacting the Reproductive Health bill on family planning, responsible parenthood and population development which is pending both in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

 

Rep. Edcel C. Lagman, principal author of House Bill 5043 on RH, made this urgent call as he said that these data which make the Philippines among the worst performing countries in improving maternal health “are not cold statistics but disturbing and distressing figures which demand immediate remedial action from policymakers.”

 

The lifetime risk of maternal death in the Philippines is 1 in 140, compared to 1 in 8,000 for women in developed countries.

Press Statements
PRESS STATEMENT
04 January 2009
0918-912-0137, 415-5455

“A farce cannot be elevated and sanctified as a law.”

Thus, Rep. Edcel C. Lagman summed up President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s decision not to approve Senate Joint Resolution No. 19 which sought to extend the land acquisition and distribution component of CARP without including the compulsory acquisition of the remaining 1.3 million hectares of private agricultural lands.

The President was “perfectly correct” in temporarily allowing LAD to expire rather than giving her imprimatur to a joint resolution which “desecrated the heart and soul of CARP by excluding compulsory acquisition which is the essence of the social justice program.”
The President should be commended for dissociating herself from a travesty which is constitutionally offensive.

The legislative agenda should now concentrate on the revival of the LAD by enacting the original HB 4077 principally authored by Lagman and previously certified as an urgent measure by the President.