Convene LEDAC or abolish it

Somewhere in today’s Opinion Section page is a Letter to the Editor sent by a certain Vicente Lucas who claimed to be the head executive assistant at the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office. Presumably, he works under PLLO secretary Manuel Mamba.

In his letter, Lucas obviously was smarting that the PLLO chief was being perceived — if not directly blamed — for the high incidence of presidential vetoes of national and local bills passed and approved by the 15th Congress.

In the spirit of fair play though, the letter-rejoinder to my previous day’s column “Vetoed” is reprinted somewhere here in full. Incidentally, the sender obviously made sure the letter is transmitted the very day that my column came out at The STAR. It was sent three ways.

First, it was transmitted through email. Then, a copy with PLLO letterhead was sent through the fax machine. And the hard copy of the same letter was delivered by messenger to The STAR office at Port Area, Manila. If that’s how diligent they do their work at the PLLO, the high mortality rate of Congress-approved bills that were vetoed by the President would have been lesser.

In his rejoinder, Lucas defended his boss as he took exception “to certain quotations” that were supposedly ascribed to the PLLO chief. Nowhere though in my entire column was Mamba quoted. If there were such, it would have been properly attributed and denoted by quotation marks. So the premises set in the letter of Lucas were wrong.

If there were imputations supposedly made, it would be better for a government functionary like Lucas to respect the taxpayers’ right to read between the lines and draw their own intelligent conclusions.

I personally don’t know Mamba or Lucas for that matter. Mamba’s name came up recently after he denounced the alleged ambush attempt against him by Gov. Alvaro Antonio while he was in Cagayan during the last May 13 election. Mamba filed last week frustrated murder charges against Gov. Antonio. The governor was earlier declared winner for his third and last term against his rival, Tuao town mayor William Mamba, brother of the PLLO chief. Another brother Antonio Mamba ran for mayor in Tuao but also lost in the May 13 election.

From what I gathered, Mamba served for three consecutive terms as congressman of Cagayan’s third district. Subsequently, he ran but also lost to Gov. Antonio during the May 2010 election. President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III appointed Mamba as PLLO chief in November 2011. Much earlier, P-Noy appointed Mamba’s wife Mabel to sit as board member of the state-run Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.

From all indications, President Aquino obviously has closely worked with Mamba while both of them were still in Congress. This was when Noy was still Tarlac congressman and later as senator. So more or less, they should know each other well on how they work.

But how come at the end of the day, to borrow the favorite line of P-Noy, there are about 65 or 71 bills vetoed out of 200 or so passed and approved by the 15th Congress?

Four bills of national applications were vetoed. But the bulk of vetoed bills were of local application. The bills were vetoed reportedly due to certain infirmities, lack of funding support, or simply because the bills did not conform to the priorities of the Aquino administration.

Senators and House leaders headed by Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. blamed the huge number of vetoed bills as largely caused by the lack of coordination between the executive branch and the two chambers of Congress. In the crafting of these proposed laws, this coordination is principally the function of the PLLO.

Among other things, it is the task of the PLLO to make sure the heads of the executive department and other government offices must attend public hearings and bicameral meetings. By doing so, these executive officials can present their inputs on any proposed laws that concern their agencies while these bills are still being crafted by Congress.

This task of the PLLO is especially important in the light of the fact that P-Noy has not regularly been convening the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) composed of key leaders of both chambers of Congress and Cabinet officials.

The LEDAC serves as the highest body created by law to thresh out, among other things, a common priority legislative agenda. As provided for by the LEDAC Law, the President as chair is mandated to convene a quarterly meeting.

The alleged lack of coordination with them by the PLLO was most felt by the senators. This situation they claimed was largely due to the running feud of Mamba with Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile over local politics in Cagayan.

Enrile’s unexpected resignation as Senate president on the penultimate session of the 15th Congress last Wednesday could end this situation at the Senate.

Senate president pro tempore Jinggoy Estrada took over as “acting” Senate chief as provided by their rules. “With a number of bills vetoed by President Aquino, I think the head of the PLLO should be replaced,” Estrada said yesterday. Even for only a day as Senate chief, Estrada echoed this wish, for whatever it’s worth.

Estrada did not try to hide his disappointment at how the PLLO head has been doing his job. Estrada recalled the only time he saw Mamba at the Senate was when they had a caucus on the â€œSin Taxes Law” which suffered also line-item presidential vetoes on two provisions of this Congress-approved tax reform measure.

Despite these presidential vetoes, it should not detract from the very productive legislative output of the 15th Congress. In their respective valedictory addresses, Enrile and Belmonte cited the landmark legislation and reform laws that were passed and signed into law by President Aquino to date.

In fact, P-Noy has created so far a total of 177 additional courts all over the country in quite a number of new laws he signed this year. But what’s more important is for these new laws to be implemented. 

The sad part is many of these laws signed in the past remain un-implemented because they were not funded. That’s why the LEDAC was created, not as a talk shop, but to put a lid on such wasteful pursuits in Congress. If P-Noy sees no need for LEDAC, then by all means abolish it.