Oreta warns vs GMA emergency powers

Sen. Tessie Aquino-Oreta said yesterday President Arroyo may be violating the Constitution if she pushes through with her plans to use emergency powers without the approval of Congress.

Existing laws and regulations, she said, are sufficient enough to address Malacañang’s urgent concerns such as escalating prices in the face of the ongoing Middle East crisis.

"Malacañang should curtail its tendency to resort to legal shortcuts in addressing these present concerns. The President’s assurance of using emergency powers only as a last resort is no excuse for the Palace to overstep its bounds and proceed with them without consulting the Congress," she emphasized.

Oreta added that if the war in Iraq drags on and Malacañang still deems these emergency powers as necessary to curtail profiteering and other abuses, then the President could ask Congress to convene a special session to address the matter.

She noted that only Congress could grant the executive branch any special or emergency powers when the country is in a state of war.

The lawmaking body, however, is now on its traditional Lenten recess and will reopen on April 21.

Oreta explained that one proof that the government does not need emergency powers to address the present economic woes triggered by the Persian Gulf crisis is the assurance made by the Philippine National Police (PNP) that it is ready to cooperate fully with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in curtailing profiteering, hoarding, and other illegal business practices that could endanger the stability of supply and prices of consumer goods.

She added that problems such as profiteering and skyrocketing fuel and consumer prices could better be addressed by keeping government agencies on their toes.

Meanwhile, as the war rages in the Middle East, Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Governor Parouk Hussin appealed to peace groups demonstrating against the American invasion of Iraq to differentiate between the US-Iraq confrontation and the GRP-MILF hostilities.

"The war against Iraq, and I am personally against it, has no relationship whatsoever to the struggle of our Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) brothers against the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP)," he noted.

The Iraqi conflict is about the reported possession by Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction while the Mindanao problem is a question of poverty, he added.

Hussin called on his former comrade-in-arms, MILF chairman Hashim Salamat, to heed the call of the Muslim and Christian residents of Mindanao for peace.