EDITORIAL - Legacy of secrecy

Right to the very end, Malacañang allies in the House of Representatives made sure they would preserve the legacy of secrecy painstakingly nurtured over the years by the Arroyo administration. Under the disabled leadership of Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr., who couldn’t get himself elected mayor of Davao City last month, the House failed to accomplish yesterday what should have been the largely ministerial task of ratifying its own handiwork: the Freedom of Information Act.   

If yesterday’s session was all about the allocation of the congressional pork barrel, the nation would have seen perfect attendance. Instead, as proponents of the bill raced against time and battled the absence of legislative will, Camiguin Rep. Pedro Romualdo, like Nograles a member of the ruling Lakas-Kampi-CMD, cited the lack of a quorum and criticized the attempt to railroad passage of the bill.

The bill has gone through the legislative mill for 14 years. It hurdled the bicameral conference committee, with the House contingent giving the conference report a unanimous nod, and was ratified by the Senate. All that the Freedom of Information Act needed was House ratification before it would be sent to President Arroyo for enactment.

Palace officials, like Nograles, made all the proper noises about wanting to see the bill enacted. That should have been simple enough. But from the moment the House resumed session after the elections, Nograles made it clear that the proposed law, which would have compelled congressmen, for example, to disclose information about their spouses and other relatives cornering renovation contracts in the chamber, was not high on his agenda. He refused to have the bill tackled at the start of the week, when a quorum was easier to muster.

Lawmakers instead preoccupied themselves with preening for the TV cameras as they entertained all the complaints from every losing candidate and crackpot about supposed cheating in the automated elections. Lawmakers also busied themselves with time-honored tradition: the slowest vote canvass in the world.

After yesterday’s adjournment, Filipinos will again have to wait a few more years to enjoy greater access to information of public interest. In the field of press freedom, this then will be the legacy of the Arroyo administration and its political allies: when journalists aren’t massacred and buried together with their service vehicles in a remote hilltop, freedom of access to information is buried by the House.