EDITORIAL - The final stretch

She has one more year to go, President Arroyo said in her final State of the Nation Address. In fact she has a much shorter period left to push her legislative agenda, and there’s still a lot on the plate. By the end of November, when all certificates of candidacy would have been filed, politicians would be busy preparing for the 2010 elections.

As the joint opening session showed, the President continues to enjoy the support of the House of Representatives, from which many legislative measures including appropriations emanate. She must use that support to ensure that Congress works as hard as she does to pass her priority bills, which she enumerated in her SONA.

These are the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program for five years, the amendment of the charter of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, funding to put more policemen on the streets, the Philippine Transport Security Act, the creation of a Department of Information and Communication Technology, and the amendment of the Public Service Law. The President particularly needs to push Congress on tax reforms, which would allay concerns in financial circles that she might sacrifice fiscal discipline as the general elections approach. She also needs to prod Congress to pass the proposed budget for 2010, but first she must tell the Department of Budget and Management to submit it to the House. Budget deliberations take months in both chambers, even without the distraction posed by repeated attempts to change the Constitution.

The President can emphasize the urgency of her legislative agenda by reminding her allies that she is not the only one being judged by the public in this crucial year. This is also the third and final session of the 14th Congress, and voters will be reviewing the performance of their legislative representatives. Lawmakers who have spent the past two years sleeping or traveling on the job still have a few more months to make up for their waste of the people’s money. In this final stretch, the focus must be on work, and more work.