Codification
Today I am taking this privilege to yield my space to my daughter, Charisse. We talked about this subject and in our discussion, I realized that she had fresh and relevant inputs. For this reason I asked her to print her thoughts here. So, while I hold myself responsible, here it is.
On February 15, 1992, Ordinance No. 1361 entitled “An Ordinance Establishing a System of Garbage Collection, Imposing Fees Therefor, Appropriating Funds, and For Other Related Purposes,” was approved by the 5th Sangguniang Panlungsod of the City of Cebu. A garbage ordinance with thirty-five articles, it contained provisions on garbage collection, zones, prohibitions and fees. Ord. No. 1361 aimed at achieving and maintaining cleanliness in Cebu City, imposed upon the citizens the moral duty to keep their properties clean, and imposed upon the government the “ultimate responsibility of establishing and maintaining an orderly and modern program for the collection and disposal of garbage, rubbish, swill, trash and other forms of waste and waste materials.”
(Article 2. Title I of RA 1361; http://www.cebucity.gov.ph/ordinances/?p=305).
Unknown to many, the process of coming up with Ord. No. 1361 was a laborious task. There were ten other garbage ordinances, penned by ten different authors, sponsored by ten different council members, and approved by ten different sanggunians. The challenge was to simplify and arrange the many juridical rules scattered in these ordinances, and avoid conflicting provisions. So, the author of that piece of legislation, my father, resorted to the only way to reconcile the varying ordinances, that is, to eradicate duplicate and/or obsolete provisions of the previous legal documents, and arrange the remaining useful parts into one cohesive whole. As in any piece of legislation, it contained a repealing clause thereby expressly repealing these ten ordinances. It also amended various inconsistent provisions of other ordinances.
Not very differently, the process is similar to codification work, which is what my father and I are currently engaged in for the Province of Cebu. While the scope of the task may be broader because it includes ordinances from 1988 up to the present, the concept of organizing the ordinances is the same. Ordinances are compiled, inventoried, classified, harmonized, and arranged into topics. The objective of the codification is to put various laws of similar branch into one systematically arranged document. On the other hand, there is such a process called legislative tracking. Through legislative tracking, ordinances continue to exist individually.
My father recently submitted to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Cebu, thru the offices of Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, Vice-Governor Agnes Magpale and Provincial Secretary Atty. Anecita Pasaylo, two draft codes – Code of Procedures and Code of Administration. Yesterday, Gov. Garcia, Vice Gov. Magpale and Atty. Pasaylo presented these codes to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of the Province of Cebu. These draft codes will have to be passed and approved by the Sanggunian before they will take effect.
As part of the contract with the province, my father is working on three other draft codes – revenue, public order, and health and sanitation. It is the intention that these codes will encompass all the ordinances penned by legislators of Cebu Province. With these five codes, we intend to make the dream of Gov. Gwen Garcia a reality. Not unlike Hammurabi’s and Napoleon’s efforts in giving legal infrastructures their due importance, Gov. Gwen has achieved for the Province of Cebu this significant legal infrastructure. I share to you the words of our dear governor. “I am certain that the codes that have been drafted will become an important tool in our people’s step into the future.” (Foreword, Code of Procedure.)
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