BY EFREN L. DANAO Senior Reporter

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. over the weekend said the majority in the chamber had cost the people important legislative measures that now would have to wait for the next Congress to be acted on.

“They [majority senators] should not have adjourned the session last February 3. Our legislative calendar said that we could hold session until February 5,” Pimentel added.

Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri adjourned the session on February 3, to meet again on May 31, when only 11 senators answered the roll call. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile charged that the boycott by the minority and their allies was a deliberate move to prevent the Senate from voting on a report that supposedly would have censured Sen. Manuel Villar Jr.

Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano said that the minority boycott of the last session day was impelled not by the report on C-5 but by the fear that the bills on the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) would be “railroaded.”

Cayetano added that the minority did not fear at all the voting on the C-5 report “because there was no way it could get 12 votes 

He said that the voting on the NTC and Pagcor bills was a different matter because they could be passed on a mere majority vote of the quorum.

Cayetano claimed that the approval of the bills on the two cash cows would extend the term of their officials who supposedly are very close to Malacañang.

Pimentel expressed doubts that the Senate could still tackle the C-5 report and pending bills when it resumes its session on May 31.

“I don’t think we can. That session is merely for canvassing the certificates of canvass for president and vice president,” he said. The scheduled elections on May 10 will pick President Gloria Arroyo’s successor.

Earlier, Enrile said that pending measures like the C-5 report and the bill reorganizing the NTC could be passed on May 31 before the Senate adopts a concurrent resolution converting Congress into the National Board of Canvassers.

The Senate failed to vote last Wednesday for lack of quorum on the report of the Senate Committee of the Whole seeking to censure Villar for allegedly making money off the C-5 road extension project.

Lack of quorum also prevented the Senate from ratifying the bicameral conference committee reports on the Philippine Immigration Act of 2009 and from approving on third and final reading the extension of the Congressional Commission on Science and Technology and Engineering, the early voting bill and the Special Education Act of 2008.

Other casualties were the New Central Bank Act, Cybercrime Prevention Act, Anti-Prostitution Act, Picture-based Warnings on Tobacco and the amendments to the Provincial Water Utilities Act of 1973.

Pimentel said that “unfortunately,” these bills would have to wait for the Fifteenth Congress (2010 to 2013) for their enactment into law.