Senate, House set priorities as Congress resumes session

After a month-long Lenten recess, the Senate and the House of Representatives have set their priorities as the 12th Congress resumes its regular session today.

The Senate will focus its attention on 10 priority measures identified by the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC), while the House will focus on economic measures.

Senate President Franklin Drilon expressed confidence that the Senate would approve all 10 measures before the first regular session adjourns in June.

Four of the 10 measures have been reported out by the committees and are pending approval on second reading. These are:

• Exemption of the judiciary from the Salary Standardization Law.

• Amendment of the Ombudsman Act of 1989 to allow private prosecutors to assist the Office of the Ombudsman in plunder cases.

• Institution of a national land use policy.

• Creation of a Film Development Council of the Philippines.

Sen. Francis Pangilinan, chairman of the Senate committee on justice, and Sen. Renato Cayetano, principal authors and sponsors of the bill exempting the judiciary from the Salary Standardization Law, believe that passage of the measure would attract lawyers to serve in the judiciary.

They said that unless the judiciary is exempted from the Salary Standardization Law, judges of regional trial courts with several years of experience would receive a pay lower than that received by a lawyer who has just pass the BAR.

Pangilinan and Cayetano pointed out that because of the poor pay in the judiciary, a big number of salas in the judiciary remain vacant, thus delaying the dispensation of justice.

The measure to amend the Ombudsman Act, also authored and sponsored by Pangilinan, is meant to facilitate the prosecution in plunder cases.

Six of the 10 priority measures are still pending in different committees which had already conducted public hearings. These are:

• Absentee Voting Act granting overseas Filipinos the right to vote.

• Dual Citizenship Act granting Philippine citizenship to former Filipino nationals who have taken foreign citizenship.

• Creation of a Special Purpose Assets Vehicle to acquire non-performing loans, real estate and other assets of financial institutions.

• Securitization Act providing for the issuance of bonds or certificates of indebtedness on the basis of future earnings.

• Creation of a Department of Housing and Urban Development.

• Amendment of the charter of the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp.

Meanwhile, the House will focus on economic measures during the remainder of the first regular session of the 12th Congress that ends in June, Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. said yesterday.

"Our focus will be to lift our people from poverty and push economic development nationwide," De Venecia said.

The measures that the House will give priority to are the ones that have been agreed on by the recent multi-party economic summit, which will be followed by a political summit early next month, he said.