TAGBILARAN CITY, Philippines – Only Rep. Arthur Yap (3rd district, Bohol) cast his negative vote against the Reproductive Health Bill No. 4244 in the House of Representatives when the crucial voting last Monday took place.
Representative Erico Aumentado (2nd district), who earlier said he is against the bill, reportedly failed to vote for the controversial bill since he was confined in a hospital at the time of the voting, as confirmed by his trusted aide Boy Pernia in a radio interview. Aumentado, who is aligned with the Nationalist People’s Coalition, reportedly said the RH Bill is “unconstitutional.”
Representative Rene Relampagos (1st district), who also trumpeted earlier his stand against the RH Bill, was nowhere to be found when the third round of voting took place. He was reportedly one of the seven solons who have abstained from voting against the measure.
The FREEMAN tried to contact Relampagos to get his side but failed. A radio program over DyTR here, which runs a series of monitoring on the health bill for past days, also failed to get an answer from Relampagos, who is a stalwart of the LP of President P-Noy.
A weekly news report on Relampagos has this to say: “His middle ground stand on the issue is not because of his being an LP but more as a representative of the people of the first district of Bohol whose views and opinions are split on where they are: pro or against the RH Bill.”
Yap, for his part, supported his negative vote by questioning on why a bill “has to be legislated when the government has all the resources to have its objectives implemented.”
A stalwart of the NPC, Yap added that the RH Bill has created so much division among the people. Instead of making this kind of law that divide the people, the government should focus and give priority to the programs, like the conditional cash transfer that would alleviate poverty, he added. (FREEMAN)