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By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter
The Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights
headed by Sen. Francis Escudero had produced the most number of
committee reports while the committees headed by Sen. Edgardo Angara
had reported out the most number of priority bills in the
five-month-old Fourteenth Congress.
Escudero, a first-time senator, came up with
nine of the 30 committee reports filed before the Senate went on
holiday recess. These are the Anti-Torture Act, the Forfeiture Law,
Decriminalizing Vagrancy, Judicial and Bar Council Reappointment,
Compensation of Victims of Human Rights Violations, the imposition
of stiffer sanctions on cell-phone theft, the Good Conduct Time
Allowance to Prisoners, Rules in the Presentation of Suspects in
Press Conference, and the Judiciary Retirement Benefits.
A committee report is the product of public
hearings conducted on related bills that it consolidates. It is the
one sponsored and debated in plenary, not the individual bills filed
on first reading.
The Judiciary Retirement Benefits was the first
committee report filed and passed on third and final reading in the
Fourteenth Congress. It was a consolidation of five bills that
sought to grant to the rest of the judiciary similar additional
retirement benefits enjoyed at present by retiring justices of the
Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.
The only priority bill among the nine was that
on the compensation of victims of human-rights violations. A similar
bill sponsored by Sen. Joker Arroyo was passed by the Senate on
third and final reading in the Thirteenth Congress, but it did not
become a law for lack of time.
The Committee on Banks, Financial Institutions
and Currencies and the Committee on Agriculture and Food, both
headed by Angara, produced three of the eight priority bills passed
by the Senate before the holiday break. These are the Personal
Equity and Retirement Account (PERA), the Credit Information System,
and the extension of the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement
Fund (ACEF) to 2015.
The bill on enhancement fund could be the first
law by the Fourteenth Congress as both the House and the Senate had
already ratified a bicameral conference report and an enrolled copy
has been sent to President Gloria Arroyo for her signature. The
extension allows the continued use of about P6.8 billion for the
protection of the agriculture sector from the regime of free trade.
Without the extension, the amount would have gone to the National
Treasury.
Angara’s Committee on Banks was also a primary
committee with the Committee on Economic Affairs headed by Sen.
Loren Legarda in coming up with the joint committee report on the
Magna Carta for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, also a priority
bill. This was a consolidation of six bills that sought to
strengthen development assistance to micro, small and medium
enterprises. The Senate has already passed this on third and final
reading and has been transmitted to the House for its concurrence.
The Senate Committee on Finance headed by Sen.
Juan Ponce Enrile devoted long hours to committee work and plenary
debates that extended up to late night to produce early the General
Appropriations Act of 2008, a priority measure.
The Finance Committee also participated in
reporting out 11 of the 28 committee reports of the Fourteenth
Congress, but this was because all measures involving appropriations
are automatically referred to it. This, however, did not demean the
performance of the committee, for the voluminous General
Appropriations Act alone was equivalent to a thousand bills. The
budget bill is the single most important bill that Congress could
and must pass in any given year.
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