A NEW effort to get Congress to grant emergency powers to President Duterte to resolve the problem of traffic congestion in Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, and other big cities of the county will be made in the 18th Congress which begins in a few days.
Newly elected Sen. Francis Tolentino has filed Senate Bill 213, to give the President “emergency powers to employ the necessary government resources, exercise or employ executive actions and measures, unhampered by existing laws, regulations, and procedures, to adopt short-term, mid-term, and long-term development plans for a sustainable and efficient transport system.”
Such a bill was filed in the last Congress at the start of the Duterte administration, but it somehow never made it. “We were all for passing the bill last Congress, if not for the failure of the Department of Transportation (DoTr) to submit to us a list of projects that will be covered by the grant of powers,” Sen. Grace Poe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Services, said. “Everything must be well-defined. Hindi pwede ang blanket grant of emergency powers under the Constitution.”
The House of Representatives passed its version of the bill in December, 2018, but the Senate bill was delayed by extended debates. The President later said he does not need the emergency powers bill, sending mixed signals to the legislators, according Senator Poe.
The President explained afterwards that he gave up on the proposal as some people were raising concerns about the possibility of corruption should he be granted emergency powers. “If they do not want to give it, we will not go in desperation and raise our hands and say, ‘No, we cannot solve it.’ In whatever way that is feasible and appropriate, even without emergency powers, we will still do what is right and proper, which is infrastructure, enforcement, discipline.”
That was in the 17th Congress. For the coming 18th Congress, Senator Tolentino will try again with his new bill. He and the other senators known to be allied with the administration should be able to allay the fears raised in the last Congress that emergency powers might be abused.
Sen. Ralph Recto has also raised a new point. Many of the country’s problems, he said the other day, can be solved without having to rewrite the Constitution or granting the government emergency powers. He cited new Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso who is now cleaning up Manila as “Exhibit A.”
We look forward to this new effort to get the Senate to approve emergency powers to solve Metro Manila’s traffic problem, along with the still undisclosed details of President Duterte’s plan to reduce traffic time from Ayala in Makati to Cubao in Quezon City to just five minutes.
