A week ago, I noticed an article written by Mr. Toby Jamilla entitled "Mocking the Constitution" which came out of my Facebook page and he touched on the issues where the Commission on Appointments rejected for the nth time the appointees of Pres. Benigno Aquino III such as Justice Sec. Leila de Lima, Energy Sec. Jericho Petilla, Environment Sec. Ramon Paje and Social Welfare Sec. Corazon "Dinky" Soliman.
Yet despite being rejected several times already, PNoy keeps on sending these people back to the CA. Indeed this is very true. There should be a cap that the CA should put so that when a person is rejected twice, it would force the President to change that person. But I guess it's too late in the hour to put up those safeguards for the CA.
But what struck me by Mr. Jamilla's article was when he got a quote from Mr. Aquino himself on this very issue when he wrote in his explanatory note for Senate Bill no. 1719 that he filed on Oct.10, 2007 when the President was still a Senator. So it is the first time that we got a glimpse of how Sen. Aquino thought about the practice done in the CA.
Then Sen. Aquino wrote, "The intent of the framers of the Constitution in creating the Commission on Appointments was to provide an effective check and balance mechanism between the Executive and Legislative branches of the government. The Act of the President (at that time Pres. Arroyo) in successively re-appointing by-passed nominees is a clear mockery of the above-mentioned principle enshrined in our fundamental law. The President has abused her power to appoint because of her consistent re-appointment of her nominees who have been consecutively by-passed by the Commission on Appointments."
No doubt, this article is a revelation or should I say we got a peek into how Pres. Aquino thinks… or at least how he used to think when he was a Senator…more so that he already burned his bridges with then Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. But now that he is the President, he is practicing the very same thing that he abhorred when Pres. Arroyo re-appointed his rejected Cabinet secretaries in the Commission on Appointments.
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Exactly a week ago, we attended a MEGA Cebu caucus with Cebuano Congressmen, led by Rep. Raul del Mar (North District), Rep. Rodrigo Abellanosa (South District), Rep. Samsam Gullas (1st District), Rep. Ace Durano (5th District), and Rep. Luigi Quisumbing (6th District) together with Sir Roberto "Bobby" Aboitiz where issues were presented to the Cebuano members of Congress in the hope that they could help speed up many issues.
The most glaring of course was the issue of the snail's paced widening of our roads. I'm saying that it is snail paced simply because of lack of a better word. But in truth, a snail moves even faster than the contractors of the Department of Public Works and Highways. Notable amongst the projects was the widening of the 300-meter Escario St. from Gorordo Ave. to Arch. Reyes Ave. which all took 11years to complete.
Today it is the widening of M. Velez St. that I began as CITOM chairman way back in 2005 when I resigned and this road widening has already taken 9 years to construct. In the end, we were told that the method used by the DPWH to widen the road was to negotiate with the landowners who would be affected by the road widening. But if you look into the M. Velez St. case, those settlers are not landowners because the land belongs to the Quijada family. So why was there any negotiation to start with?
At least during the MEGA Cebu meeting, the group took cognizance of the fact that there should have been a time limit that the DPWH should adhere to, like after 6 months of negotiation if there is no agreement, then DPWH must go to expropriation, pay the landowner 10% and let the case rot in court rather than the Cebu City constituents suffer through those delays.
CITOM Traffic Engineering Consultant Lyn Madrona gave a short power-point presentation before the MEGA Cebu caucus with the congressmen and revealed that there was an average 1,000 traffic violators every month. Those figures were not far different from the figures during my stint in CITOM. In the end, CITOM once more requested for a traffic court. This brought me back to my days in CITOM when we also asked the Supreme Court for the same thing, but we were flatly denied.
At this point, perhaps we need to be creative. If the Supreme Court refuses to give us a traffic court, perhaps the Court Mediation program can be tapped to assist regarding this problem. If the Supreme Court agrees, the Court Mediators will simply act as a filter, wherein those drivers who do not contest their traffic fines can immediately be dispatched as soon as the fines are paid. This way, it wouldn't clog our already clogged courts of law.
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Email: vsbobita@gmail.com