Garcia claims US lobby for RH bill

THE oldest lawmaker in Congress has accused his colleagues of being bankrolled by a huge US lobby in pushing for the adoption of a population control measure in Congress.

The privilege speech of  86-year-old Cebu Rep. Pablo Garcia, in which he claimed the existence of a P20 million to P50 million lobby fund for the passage of the reproductive health (RH) bill had prompted one of its proponents, Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Teodoro Casiño, to ask whether the US government is indeed meddling in Philippine affairs.

“I think Congressman Garcia’s accusations are too serious to be ignored and we should look at this closely,” said Casiño in a phone interview.

Garcia said the US lobby’s main vehicle in Congress was the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development led by Minority Leader Edcel Lagman.

He said the committee is funded and maintained by foreign agencies and institutions “in the service of a foreign power.”

Garcia said among the committee’s alleged benefactors are the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Ford Foundation, Packard Foundation, United Nations Fund on Population and other institutions engaged in world population control.

“For several years and until 2009, this committee held office in the Batasan complex, whether in the north wing or south wing. Now, it is holding office somewhere else after its presence in the Batasan complex was denounced by a member of the House on the floor,” Garcia said.

Garcia described the panel as the “unelected de facto committee on population.”

Some of the efforts of the US lobby to rush passage of the RH bill, he said, included referring the measure to the House committee on population and family relations instead of the committee on health.

Garcia said the bill was not primarily about population.

He also questioned why Lagman, instead of committee chair, Biliran Rep. Rogelio Espina spearheaded the sponsorship of  the bill.

The Cebuano lawmaker likewise complained that the sponsors take first crack at the floor debates on the bill.

Lagman did not return the Inquirer’s calls or text messages.

In his privilege speech last week, Garcia said he wanted to speak out against the “conduct of some of his colleagues.”

“In my judgment it raises questions of potential conflict of interest or the possible transgression of the boundaries of appropriate ethical conduct,” he said.

Garcia said the US has been working to “seduce, manipulate or coerce” the state into passing the RH bill, or House Bill No. 4244, so that not even leftist and hyper-nationalist groups know that they had aligned themselves to the interest of a foreign power.

Garcia said the Philippines was only one of 13 countries that the US had targeted for “aggressive and coercive population control” using millions of dollars “ostensibly as benevolent funding assistance but actually in pursuit of its own global population-control strategy.”   Inquirer