Duterte signs 153 laws in 5 months

MANILA, Philippines — President Duterte signed a total of 153 laws over a five-month period this year, or an average of 30 a month or one a day.

Copies of laws that Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea sent to the House of Representatives showed that the President affixed his signature on the Congress-approved bills between April and August.

The President allowed an additional 17 bills to lapse into law, bringing to 170 the total of legislative measures enacted within the five-month period.

Most of the bills signed by the Chief Executive are what lawmakers call local laws, as they are of local application.

Many of them authorize the creation of barangays, conversion of local schools or roads into national schools or highways, creation of additional courts, changing the names of roads, conversion of local hospitals into national health facilities or establishing district offices of national agencies like the Land Transportation Office (LTO).

The purposes of the laws entail the appropriation of hundreds of millions – perhaps, billions – of taxpayers’ money, but since there are no funds for them in the national budget, they are just an addition to an already long list of unfunded laws.

No one knows when a provincial road converted into a national highway, a new regional trial court, a local hospital transferred to the national government for funding and better management or a new LTO office in a congressional district will ever be funded.

A number of the new laws are of national application, including Republic Act 11346, which increased excise taxes on tobacco and vapor products.

Among the 153 laws signed by the President were several franchise bills, mostly involving radio and television broadcasting, and telecommunications.

The Chief Executive, however, chose not to sign 16 broadcasting and telecom franchises and just allowed these to lapse into law.

Among the 16 are renewals for TV-5 and the broadcasting network run by Catholic bishops.

Only one local bill became a law when Duterte did not sign or veto it within 30 days from its submission to his office: one about the search for the presidency of the Palompon Institute of Technology in Leyte and its conversion into a state university.