No urgency for FOI, but still a priority

MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino will not certify the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill as urgent, saying other priority measures must be given ample attention.

Aquino did not mention the FOI bill in his last State of the Nation Address but the Office of the Executive Secretary, in a letter to Congress, included it in a list of Malacañang’s priorities.

Aquino had promised to push for the bill’s passage before the end of his term to promote transparency and accountability.

“Well, that’s included (in the priority bills) but it’s difficult. You know, I am very careful in certifying a bill as urgent. There is a constitutional requirement (as to when) the certification can be made urgent,” Aquino said in a TV5 interview aired Sunday night.

“We have 26 priority bills... how do you choose which one should be passed first? On my part, I don’t have a choice on which one should be first. Everything is important,” he said.

For instance, Aquino said a pension system must be given priority because the country must hire 20,000 new soldiers. The problem was the existence of a law indexing the pension of retired officials with those in active service.

He said this would also have an effect on the police and the whole bureaucracy as they would need salary increase as well.

Aquino added the importance of “fiscal rationalization” to get rid of incentive schemes done before but were no longer working at this time.

He said this was needed to attract more investors. There is also the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law, which he would certify as urgent.

The President said they had submitted all the inputs on the FOI bill and he could only appeal to Congress to work on the priority measures quickly.

He said things should have been done yesterday if he could have his way, but Congress would complain because “they are not a rubber stamp.”