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Reproductive Health
  • CHALLENGES TO RH
  • (Speech delivered by Rep. Edcel C. Lagman during the Launching
  • of the Primer on Legal Issues in Reproductive Health
  • at the UP Law Center on 09 December 2011)

 

           The variations of the RH bill have been stalled in the legislative gauntlet for over 12 years now since the first comprehensive bill was filed in 1999 during the 11th Congress.

 

            The travails of the RH bill continue despite favorable and enabling indicators like:

 

            1)          Survey after survey --nationwide, regional and local--document the peoples’ vast and continuing support for the measure with (a) 71% of the respondents saying nationwide that it must be enacted without further delay (with higher percentages registered in areas where the Congressmen are opposed to the bill, like 86% in Manila, 89% in Parañaque and 88% in Cebu); (b) 68% responding that the government has authority to use public funds for family planning, including the procurement and distribution of contraceptives to voluntary acceptors (64% in Manila, 70% in Parañaque and 75% in Cebu); (c) voters prefer candidates who have an agenda on family planning; and (d) the vast majority of the respondents are Catholics.

 

           2)           The Philippines is a signatory to relevant international conventions promoting and protecting reproductive health, like: (a) the Tehran Convention on Human Rights which upholds the right of parents to freely and responsibly determine the number and spacing of their children; (b) the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action; (c) Convention on the Rights of the Child; (d) Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); (e) Universal Declaration of Human Rights; (f) International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICECSR); and (g) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

 

               3)          President Aquino has endorsed to the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) and to the Congress the enactment of the RH bill as a priority administration measure.

 

               In this connection, it is pertinent to ask whether the President is doing enough to assure the passage of the RH bill? Maybe prioritization is not sufficient. The President has to do more to convince his congressional allies that the enactment of the RH bill is imperative as an indispensable tool to achieve sustainable human development.

 

              The arsenal of the Presidency to rally support for a measure or agenda is legendary. This time, the weaponry of power can be used by the President for the good of the greatest number—the multitude of the marginalized and disadvantaged, particularly women and children who are the direct and immediate beneficiaries of the RH bill.

 

              The challenges to the RH bill are not cerebral. They are mundane and parochial. They cannot even be elevated to “challenges”. They are just plain “obstructions”, like the following:

 

              1)  Problem of quorum;

              2)  Repetitive questions or recidivist interpellations and absentee interpelators;

              3)  Political equation; and

              4)  Fear factor

 

              Quorum – It is a truism that the act of legislation is a numbers game. The numbers could be herded, mob-like, unthinking, ambivalent or sparse. But they are numbers just the same. Numbers are needed to enact. And lack of numbers is useful to delay legislation.

 

              The lack of a quorum is a convenient excuse to stall legislation. The absence of a quorum can even be contrived or intentional.

 

              It is for this reason that we have continuously reminded RH authors and advocates to be present at all times. But even they could not subscribe to this strict discipline.

 

              The solution is for the leadership of the House to take the bold initiative and enforce the rules, including sanctions for absenteeism. Leniency must be jettisoned. It is a bane to policy-making.

 

              Recidivist Interpellations – After 12 years of debate inside and outside the Halls of Congress, all relevant and irrelevant questions have been asked about the RH bill. There is absolutely no new argument or novel misconception.

 

              Questions are asked repeatedly not to debate or inform but to cause delay.

 

              Many registered themselves as interpellators but when their time comes to confront the sponsors, they either conveniently absent themselves or feign not being prepared.

 

              We call again on the leadership of the House of Representatives to adopt, issue and enforce the rules of engagement which ban repetitive questions and limit the interpellator’s time to not more than one (1) hour in order to foreclose inordinate delay.

 

              Political Equation – Politics is addition. To a politician, every vote counts, even the vote of the devil. Hence, a politician reaches out to all. Although there is no Catholic vote, an ordinary politician, as much as possible, will not dare displease his Bishop or get the ire of the Church. Consequently, he usually defers or succumbs to the importuning of the clergy.

 

              The solution is a strong political will and steadfast commitment to a cause. This should be buttressed by a full realization that the RH advocacy is supported by the people and there is popular rejection of the undue interference of the Church hierarchy in secular affairs.

 

             Fear Factor - The macabre instruments of torture and terror employed for ages by despots and ecclesiastics are merely secondary to the pervasive and malevolent instigation of fear to secure blind adherence and break principled resistance.

 

             The Catholic Church has long perfected the policy and practice of instilling fear in both the faithful and prospective converts.

 

            The fear of sin has been conceptualized and propagated by clerics in order to make their ministry continually relevant as they intercede on behalf of sinners for God’s pardon and mercy. The fear of eternal damnation and hellfire has coerced or frightened people to obey Church dogma and has subdued crusading dissenters against the teachings of the faith.

 

             Nowhere in recent years has the Church’s mastery of the fear factor been put to much exploitative use than in the current debates on the reproductive health bill – fear of contraceptives, fear of a demographic winter and fear of promiscuity, among others.

 

            The Catholic Church peddles the fear and lie that contraceptives like pills, IUDs and injectables induce abortions or are abortifacients, and will definitely lead to cancer; a demographic winter, which is a scare tactic, will lead to the decimation of the Filipino race; and sexuality education will create a breed of sex maniacs.

 

             The solution to fear is to foster the truth. Those who capitalize on fear are bankrupt in reason. They cannot compete in the free market of ideas. Fear has to be confronted and dismantled because it is the antithesis of truth and free choice.

 

            These “challenges”, more appropriately “obstructions”, are not insuperable. They are feeble posturing and mainly dilatory tactics. But delay is not victory. It just temporizes the eventual and certain triumph of a progressive and much-needed RH law.

 

            In our inevitable victory, we truly count on the unwavering support of the NGO community which prominently includes the ReproCen, and the steadfast advocacy of the academe like the UP College of Law, UP Institute of Human Rights, UP Institute of International Legal Studies and Center for International Law.

 

             This Primer on Legal Issues in Reproductive Health is a welcome addition to the increasing positive literature on reproductive health. And more importantly, it will be our veritable ammunition when we venture to the next battlefield—the judicial forum where the opponents of RH vow to contest the constitutionality of the RH law.

 

             Let me underscore that the detractors of the RH bill are the ones going to the Supreme Court. This means that they have conceded that eventually there will be a Reproductive Health Law, whose constitutionality they will challenge, albeit vainly and perfunctorily.

 

             Whether these “challenges” are real or contrived, your RH advocates inside and outside the Congress are always ready to confront and vanquish the oppositors, now in the Congress and subsequently in the Supreme Court.

House

  

       Notwithstanding the full recognition of the fiscal autonomy of the Supreme Court and constitutional bodies with the return to said agencies of their respective funding for unfilled positions with only a reportorial  requirement prescribed, and the grant of P5,000,000.00 for the publication of the Philippine Collegian, the students’ newspaper of the University of the Philippines, I nonetheless cast a dissenting vote because the appropriations for the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) and for Public Private Partnerships (PPP) are inordinately overstated and excessively funded, which budgets could have been reduced to augment the appropriations for education, SUCs, health and infrastructure.

House
  • CONTINUING ASSAULT ON THE CONSTITUTION
  • AND MOCKERY OF THE SUPREME COURT
  • (Privilege Speech delivered by Minority Leader Edcel C. Lagman
  • on 21 November 2011)

 

             Mr. Speaker and distinguished colleagues:

             The malevolent game plan of the Aquino administration is to defy the Supreme Court at all cost in order to fully realize its all-consuming obsession to persecute and incarcerate former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The administration’s newly invented mantra is if the Executive can implement the law, it has likewise the option not to implement the law.

             The Aquino administration is ready to impair, and has even trampled upon, civil liberties like the constitutional right to travel, presumption of innocence and freedom from arrest except upon independent finding of probable cause by the judge after due process.

            There was only one primary purpose for the (1) defiance of the Supreme Court’s TRO allowing GMA to leave for medical treatment abroad; (2) bullet train resolution by the Joint DOJ-COMELEC Panel for the filing of the electoral sabotage case against GMA despite the pending petition in the SC challenging the constitutionality and jurisdiction of the Joint Panel; and (3) the issuance with precipitate alacrity of the warrant of arrest against GMA by the Regional Trial Court of Pasay City, and the singular purpose is to prevent GMA from exercising her constitutional right to travel and detain her in the country, albeit arbitrarily and illegally.

           We should not forget that adjudications of the Supreme Court and all inferior courts must be based on real facts and legal verities, and not on imagined fears and partisan speculations.

           In the case of the right to travel of the former President, the real facts are: (a) at the time she was barred from travelling on the night of November 15, 2011, there were no pending cases filed against her in any court of law; (b) there is no hold departure order (HDO) issued against her by any competent court; and (c) former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is suffering from a rare ailment necessitating her treatment abroad.

            The legal verities are:  (a) the liberty to travel is guaranteed under the Bill of Rights; (b) the right to travel cannot be impaired except in the interest of national security, public safety or public health as provided by law, not one of which obtains relative to the projected travel of the former President, even as the Congress has not yet enacted the implementing law pursuant to the directive of the Constitution; (c) the watchlist orders issued by Justice Secretary Leila De Lima are not equivalent to an HDO; (d) the Supreme Court has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) upholding GMA’s right to travel and restraining the enforcement of the DOJ Circular No. 41 and the WLOs issued by Secretary De Lima; and (e) the Supreme Court has junked the Government’s motion for reconsideration even as it is entrenched in our jurisprudence that a motion for reconsideration cannot stay a TRO.

            These factual and legal realities cannot be overlooked or supplanted by the Aquino administration’s mere imagined fears and baseless speculations that the former President is a flight risk and would seek political asylum abroad. There is no single credible and competent evidence presented by the Aquino administration to substantiate its fears and speculations.

            The propensity of this arbitrary and despotic agenda feeds on two perceptions: (1) the former President is unpopular so much so that the bastardization of her rights will not incense the people and may even get popular approval; and (2) the uniformed forces – the military and the police – are supportive of the administration.

            The foregoing constitutes feeble anchorage for supplanting the Constitution and the rule of law.

            The issue of justice, fair play and constitutionality are not to be determined by opinion polls or the public pulse. These are justiciable issues for adjudication by the judicial forum, more particularly the Supreme Court.

            Moreover, it is a condescending assault on the people’s ultimate judgment on arrogance of power, which is no different from a cacique’s insulting the intelligence of his unlettered tenant.

            History is replete with the people’s mass protests and resolve against rulers who have bludgeoned the rule of law. The EDSA People Power Revolution is not too distant as to be forgotten.

            The military and police officials and men are sworn to uphold the supremacy of the Constitution. While the President is Commander-in-Chief, he detaches himself from the chain of command when he impairs the Constitution. An unlawful order or unconstitutional command is not a mandate to be followed.

            Again, history is replete with heads of State cast in isolation and oblivion for flaunting the Constitution and denigrating the rule of law.

            I beseech the distinguished Members of this Chamber to shed off their partisan loyalties and uphold fealty to the Constitution and support the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of justiciable issues.

            I defer to the High Tribunal the resolution of the legal and constitutional issues on the raging controversy. And I earnestly hope that once the Supreme Court has ruled, the political departments would obey and follow its ruling.

            Thank you, Mr. Speaker and distinguished colleagues.

 

 

 

House

THREAT AND COERCION BY TEXT MESSAGING

(Privilege Speech of Minority Leader EDCEL C. LAGMAN on 21 March 2011)

  

          The impeachment proceedings against the respondent Ombudsman have increasingly degenerated into an inordinately partisan enterprise.

           While it is conceded that impeachment is generally political in character, nonetheless it is impressed with a quasi-judicial nature, for which reason the immutable tenets of due process should be accorded to both the complainants and the respondent.

           The partisan alacrity to doom the Ombudsman was started by the President himself when he unabashedly and publicly rallied the members of his party to impeach the Ombudsman – targeting the Ombudsman as public enemy number one, who is not even charged with graft and corruption, but with contrived sins of omission.

           The President imprinted his own logo on the impeachment proceedings unmindful that under the Constitution he has no role or participation whatsoever in impeachments.

           While the House of Representatives acts as prosecutor and the Senate sits as the impeachment court, and the Supreme Court can, in proper cases, exercise judicial review, the President is shut out of the proceedings, except when he is the respondent himself.

           Under Section 19 of Article VII, the President is even prohibited from granting pardons in impeachment cases.

           After the President opened the floodgates for the impeachment of the Ombudsman, the partisan inundation intensified.

           It reached a chilling level with the circulation last weekend of the following text message:

           “Frm Cong. Abaya – Favor kindly disseminate to all reps – LP and non-LPs. This shud b made clear to all. Those who will vote no or absent/abstain on impeachment will get 0 as in zero. At least walang sisihan that there was no forewarning. Thank you.”

           The unmistakable import of this text message is crystal clear:

           1. The message purportedly came from “Cong. Abaya” in reference to our distinguished colleague, Rep. Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya, the Chairman of the powerful Committee on Appropriations.

           2. There will be no funding releases to any Member of the House who votes against the impeachment or abstains or is absent.

           3. The non-release is “0 as in zero.”

           4. It is not even a “fair warning” but a “forewarning” as in “beware, you know the adverse consequences.”

           Aside from being the apex of partisanship which is unparalleled in the annals of Congress, this “forewarning” demeans Members of this House as salivating mercenaries who would trade their judicious discretion and conscientious conviction for SAROs and NCAs.

           The “forewarning” desecrates democracy in a deliberative assembly and reduces our debates into haggling bouts in the marketplace.

           The “forewarning” insults the integrity of the Members of this August Chamber and goads them to dance like unthinking puppets to the orchestrating baton of the President.

           This is also blatant bribery! This is a crime!

           Honorable Colleagues, I am certain we are not taking lying down this subversion of our independence and integrity.

           Let us rise as one to denounce this transgression and protect the supremacy and freedom of our hallowed Institution whose Members are the duly-elected Representatives of the sovereign people.

           Let us vote on the Articles of Impeachment with an open and fair mind. Let us be extremely judicious. Let us resist outside dictations, and follow only the well-meaning dictates of our respective consciences.

           Of course, expectedly, the Honorable Abaya has disavowed authorship of the threatening text message. I believe him. He cannot do this to his colleagues on his own. His name and position were used with aggravating premeditation. The Office of the President has not even categorically disclaimed privity to such damning message.

           The ominous text was sent purposely to deliver a coercive message. It has boomeranged.

           Fund releases are not for the personal benefit of Members of the House. They are for the benefit of their constituencies. Our constituents should not be deprived or punished for the votes we cast.

          Due to the negative publicity the text has generated, Malacañang belatedly announced that the PDAF will be released, irrespective of one’s vote, which should be the case. But the damage has been done and the fear it was designed to create has taken its toll.

         I ask the leadership of the House of Representatives to assure a full-blown debate on the Report of the Committee on Justice and the proposed Articles of Impeachment, not only to afford fair and thorough deliberation but to dispel any suspicion that we have been cowed to subservience by any threat or promise of gold.

           I also ask the leadership to immediately cause the investigation of this latest assault against our Institution. More than the impeachment proceedings, the preservation and protection of the independence and integrity of our Chamber must be upheld and prioritized.

           The investigation must be undertaken by a Committee of the Whole because the entire Membership was maligned and threatened.

           Pending the results of the investigation, the consideration of the Report of the Committee on Justice must be suspended.

            Anyway, the Plenary has sixty (60) session days from the submission last Tuesday, March 15, 2011, of the Committee Report and the accompanying Articles of Impeachment to consider, deliberate and dispose of the same (paragraph 2 of Section 8, Rule III of the House Rules of Procedure in Impeachment Proceedings). And according to the Senate, it can only take up the impeachment case, if ever referred to it, only by May when the sessions resume after the Lenten break.

           Our integrity and independence have been impeached even before we could even act on the impeachment of the Ombudsman. Silence and inaction, even more so subservience, are shameful epitaphs for this Congress of the People.