After the GAA & Anti-Dynasty bill, how about the FOI?

HE national budget, which goes by the title General Appropriations Act (GAA), is the top priority bill awaiting action in Congress. For 2016, the national budget amounts to P3.002 trillion, an increase of 15.2 percent from the 2015 budget of P2.606 trillion. The 2016 budget is also nearly double the 2010 budget of P1.541 trillion.

The proposed budget was submitted to Congress last Tuesday, a month earlier than the usual schedule in the last five years. This should give Congress more than enough time to go through it and approve it well before the year begins in January. If, as charged by some critics, the 2016 budget is full of lump-sum appropriations which could later be diverted to undesirable ends, Congress will have sufficient time to ferret them out and require more specific listings.

In his State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Monday, President Aquino specifically named two other bills he wants Congress to enact into law – the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) and the Anti-Political Dynasty bill that would give life to the ban in the 1987 Constitution that has remained unimplemented all these 28 years.

The BBL is expected to breeze through the House of Representatives, but it may face considerable opposition in the Senate. As for the Anti-Political Dynasty bill, many members of Congress are beneficiaries of the non-enactment of this measure. It may be unrealistic to expect its approval after all these years, but President Aquino specifically cited it in his final SONA and it would be unfortunate if his partymates and their allies would reject it at this closing stage of his administration.

There is one other bill that President Aquino had pushed for even when he was campaigning for the presidency in 2010 and always included in his priority list of bills for Congress to consider. This is the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill which would open to the public many operations, agreements, contracts, and other activities of government agencies.

This bill was filed every year in Congress but, like the Anti-Political Dynasty bill, it was always set aside, probably for the same reason as the Anti-Dynasty bill – it goes against the self-interest of many officials who would rather keep some arrangements secret. After the President said nothing about FOI in his SONA, the Makabayan Bloc in Congress commented he is probably afraid of an FOI law because of “too many skeletons in the administration’s closet.”

The Senate passed an FOI bill as early as 2013, while Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. is pushing for FOI in the House. Now, if only President Aquino adds his voice to the growing consensus behind the FOI bill – and really pushes for it in Congress – he would effectively belie the claim about many administration skeletons in the closet. It would be a major legacy of his administration.