Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. is calling for a dialog with anti-Reproductive Health (RH) bill lawmakers this week to set the ground rules in the passage of the bill that is under threat of being shelved again in the 15th Congress.
According to the House leader, there has to be some ground rules in the plenary hall between the pro-and anti-RH lawmakers who are doing all sorts of tactics to pass and to delay the disposition of the measure that has been the cause to heated exchanges between the lawmakers.
Belmonte said he would meet with his colleagues to discuss the possibility of working together in allowing the bill to progress through the period of amendments.
“I’ll be conducting a private dialog with my colleagues who are against the passage of the RH measure for us to set ground rules,” Belmonte yesterday said.
On Wednesday, anti-RH lawmakers managed to delay the period of amendments, by delivering long privilege speeches that ended up with a move to call for the adjournment of the session.
“For example, I will propose to please refrain from delivering privilege speeches, but if they can’t agree, they should limit the time and not deliberately delay the plenary proceedings,” he stressed.
Belmonte explained that the RH measure is not comparable to the deliberations on the 2013 national budget because most of the lawmakers are in support of the P2.006-trillion General Appropriations Bill (GAB).
“It is wrong to compare the budget and the RH bills because the appropriations measure for next year is being supported by most of the members of the House of Representatives while the RH measure is being opposed,” he added.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, one of the main proponents of RH bill, reiterated his challenge to Belmonte to proceed with the voting by not tolerating their colleagues who managed to delay the process.
Lagman stressed the need for the leadership to fix a schedule for the further consideration of the RH bill in the same process that the deliberation of the appropriations bill is delimited by a definite time-frame.
“I appeal to the House leadership to foreclose the malevolent and dilatory filibustering and strictly enforce the rule on questions of privilege because more than a right, this privilege to speak is subject to the permission of the presiding officer who shall determine whether the request is in order,” he said.
Some of the lawmakers who delivered privilege speeches were Cebu Rep. Benhur Salimbangon who talked about the higher electricity rates in Bantayan Island and Parañaque City Rep. Roilo Golez who delved on the need to prioritize the delivery of relief goods to the victims of the recent monsoon rains over the discussion of the RH bill.
Lagman said Section 101 of the Rules of the House of Representatives provides that “questions of privilege are those affecting the duties, conducts, rights, privileges, dignity, integrity or reputation of the House or of its members, individually or collectively.”
The Albay lawmaker said “the invocation by Palawan Rep. Dennis Socrates of a question of privilege to assail the decision of the House to terminate the debates and the speech of Golez on congressional response to the calamities were obviously not within the ambit of questions of privilege.”
Meanwhile, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile also yesterday came to the defense of Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III who has been barraged with various kinds of criticisms after he delivered speeches against the controversial RH bill, saying supporters of the measure have resorted to personal attacks in trying to get back at his colleague.
“Did Tito (Sotto) tell the truth or not? They should attack what he said as whether it’s true or not, instead of attacking him personally. I hope that we center the debate on the bill, on the issues arising from the bill instead of this matter on copying, death certificate and others,” Enrile said.
The upper chamber chief took the cudgels for Sotto on charges of supposed plagiarism in his privilege speech where some portions of it were allegedly lifted from a blogspot of US-based blogger Sarah Pope.
The majority leader allegedly committed plagiarism as he failed to attribute in his speech the works of Pope.
But Enrile, in an interview with dzBB, practically exonerated Sotto from whatever lapses the majority leader may have committed, even if the latter’s own chief of staff acknowledged the blunders but that of their staff and not of the making of the senator.
“To be fair to Tito (Sotto), I heard him say and he even said that the ‘things I’ve been telling you are the product of our research from other sources.
“Secondly, was the issue that was copied (or plagiarized supposedly), if he indeed merely copied it, was accurate or not? If it is factual, why can’t he make use of it (in his speech)?
“An idea, once you release it to the public unless you copyright(ed) it, it can be used. When you recite
Hamlet, you know it was Shakespeare,” he pointed out.
Enrile also chastised those who took a dig on Sotto for relating the issue from an unfortunate incident in the past, that of losing his five-month-old baby boy who was conceived by his actress-wife Helen Gamboa even as she was using contraceptive pills nearly four decades, by demanding the majority leader to produce the death certificate of his late son.
“We respect their position, but we should not nail Tito to the cross because of what happened to his family,” he stressed. Gerry Baldo and Angie M. Rosales