EDITORIAL - Irrelevant issues

Even in the global pandemic we are currently experiencing, it seems that some lawmakers want to draw attention away from the important issues our government and our nation have to tackle.

The League of Municipalities of the Philippine recently proposed new changes to the charter of the Philippines, including five-year terms with no limits and the right to source from taxes outside the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

There are more issues that are sure to attract a lot of assenting and dissenting opinions among other lawmakers, and discussions are sure to be lengthy and take up time and resources. Time and resources better spent to address the current crisis.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon actually hits the nail on the head when he says lawmakers should focus on helping Filipinos hit hardest by the pandemic instead of tackling other issues.

"Constitutional reform is always a divisive issue. What we need today is food rather than cha-cha (charter change). Five million Filipinos experienced involuntary hunger in the past three months. Is cha-cha the solution? We can have all kinds of reasons but at bottom, let’s see what the real score is or what is the intention," he is quoted by ANC as saying.

It would seem that some of our lawmakers have differing priorities during this time of the pandemic as this is not the first time something irrelevant to the current crisis, or something that seems designed to draw attention away from it, was brought up.

Not too long ago some representatives proposed to rename the Ninoy Aquino International Airport into something only Tagalog-speaking people could pronounce. They claimed the new name would get rid of the “political color” of NAIA and at the same time make Filipinos “proud”.

Also just recently, a senator brought up the proposal to change our national flower from sampaguita to waling-waling to get rid of “colonial attachments”.

Don’t get us wrong. We are not saying these things are not worth discussing. We are saying they should be discussed at length when they become relevant issues. And right now they are far from being relevant issues.