Even if certain lying crooks in the House of Representatives find the decency to admit that last Friday’s session to ratify the Freedom of Information Act was nothing but a moro-moro, that bill is dead in the 14th Congress. That was what Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr. said at the resumption of session after the elections, and he’s a man of his word… when it suits his purposes.
Transparency is indispensable for good governance and national competitiveness, for attracting job-generating foreign investment, and yes, for strengthening democracy. Over the past decade, under the watch of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the country has steadily slipped in international rankings on transparency. Alongside that slide, the country has progressively fallen in its rankings on national competitiveness and levels of foreign direct investment.
The avowed commitment of the Arroyo administration to the enactment of the FOI law was shown to be nothing more than lip service as all of the President’s relatives in the House — her two sons, brother-in-law and sister-in-law — did not bother to show up for the ratification. Also refusing to participate was Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, who claimed to have footed the President’s bill in her lavish dinner last year in New York. Also absent from the roll call was one of the President’s favorite traveling companions, Amelita Villarosa, the congresswoman who claimed responsibility for the distribution of bundles of cash in paper bags to her colleagues and provincial governors at Malacañang.
The effort to promote transparency now falls on the shoulders not of the incoming 15th Congress, but on the next president, Benigno Aquino III. Except for the high number of congressmen who have bolted the pro-Arroyo Lakas-Kampi-CMD for other parties, the quality of the House membership has largely remained the same: landed, moneyed, and fiercely protective of the principal family enterprise, politics. Congressmen like the pork barrel system and the opaqueness that allows them to get away with fat commissions from contractors and payoffs from lobby groups.
Public expectations of Aquino are focused on his main campaign promise: to drastically reduce if not eliminate corruption. Even if he is blocked by an uncooperative Congress, Aquino can bypass the legislature and wield his executive powers to promote transparency at all levels of government. He can set reasonable limits in invoking executive privilege. He can strengthen the government’s auditing and anti-corruption arms. He can reward success stories in plugging opportunities for graft. At every step, all that will be needed is an executive order — something that can never be expected of the outgoing president.