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By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter
Driving from the House to Malacañang takes only
an hour (even with traffic), but it took congressmen 22 days to
transmit the enrolled copy of the certified bill on cheaper
medicines to the President for signature.
All the while, legislators were excoriating
Malacañang for the long delay in the signing of the Universally
Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicines Act of 2008 and even
charged that a strong lobby against the bill was afoot. It turns out
that the enrolled copy of the certified bill was with Congress, and
the Palace only received the bill Wednesday—22 days after the
ratification of the bicameral report.
It has been acknowledged that bureaucracy works
at a turtle pace, notwithstanding the fact that the bill involved
was certified urgent and was acknowledged as such by both the House
and the Senate.
The two chambers ratified the bicameral
conference committee on April 29 with legislators, particularly Sen.
Manuel Roxas 2nd, expressing high hopes that the much-awaited bill
would be signed into law before Labor Day, May 1.
The ratified bicameral report was printed into
what is called enrolled bill by the Senate. It is a parliamentary
practice for the chamber that approved a measure first to print the
enrolled copy. The printing and signing of the enrolled copy at the
Senate took a week. Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. said it took
that long because they had to certify that the enrolled bill was
really a verbatim copy of the ratified bill. To the credit of Villar,
he signed it as soon as it reached his desk.
The enrolled copy was officially transmitted by
the Senate to the House on May 8 for the signature of Speaker
Prospero Nograles and the House secretary-general. The bill
languished at the House for 18 days before it was returned to the
Senate Bills and Index section on May 20 for recording. In the
morning of May 21, it was transmitted to Malacañang through the
Presidential Legislative Liaison Office. No wonder, Malacañang
could not locate the bill when asked by reporters because it was
still with Congress.
More than two weeks ago, Health Undersecretary
Alexander Padilla had claimed that a US lobby group was trying to
keep President Gloria Arroyo from signing the measure. Villar and
Roxas, principal author of the Senate version, did not echo this
claim, but they wondered why it was taking Malacañang so long to
sign the enrolled bill. Obviously, they did not know that President
Arroyo still had to receive the bill.
Villar said the bill may lapse into law if the
President does not sign it within 30 days from receipt. He, however,
did not believe that Mrs. Arroyo would allow this to happen.
The 22 days that it took the bill to reach
Malacañang from Congress is actually short, compared to the three
years that it took Congress to pass it.
Earlier, Roxas warned that vested interests
would work for the failure of the Universally Accessible Cheaper and
Quality Medicines Act of 2008.
“We must be twice as determined as they are in
working for its success. Approval of this law is one step, effective
implementation is another,” he said.
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