House forced to adjourn session due to poor attendance

House leaders were forced to adjourn a rare Friday session because of poor attendance but they remain optimistic that the P1.8 trillion budget for 2012 will be approved next week.

“We are only slightly behind schedule. We’ll finish next week as scheduled,” said Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. after the House ended its work day at 12 noon when only 73 of the chamber’s 285 members answered the roll call.

Deputy Minority Leader Danilo Suarez said the aborted session reflected badly on the majority coalition members’ attitude towards their legislative duties.

“Just because they can get what they want because of their superiority in numbers does not excuse them from attending the session,” said Suarez in a phone interview.

“It’s the majority’s problem. They should be made to realize how important the budget is,” said Zambales Representative Milagros Magsaysay. The Zambales representative was part of the minority that boycotted the committee hearings on the budget, ostensibly to save their questions on the measure for the plenary debate.

Appropriations committee chairman Joseph Emilio A. Abaya said the poor turnout was nothing to worry about. “It is human nature that is behind the low turnout. It is not a threat at all. Even God had to rest on the Sabbath,” he said.

Ilocos Norte Representative Rodolfo Fariñas said House members were “mere mortals” who had succumbed to their Friday habit of returning to their constituents.

Since only minor items were up for debate—the budget of the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process—most members decided to skip yesterday’s session, he said.

Eastern Samar Representative Benjamin Evardone said these items have been  extensively debated and deliberated in the marathon committee hearings and preplenary discussions, aside from the one-on-one meetings between cabinet members and the political parties and party-list groups making up the ruling coalition.

Teodoro Casiño, party-list representative for Bayan Muna, said the low turnout was just “force of habit” as lawmakers normally go back to their districts on Thursdays and Fridays.

Abaya said attendance was likely to improve next week as lawmakers tackle the disputed items in the budget like the conditional cash transfer program, private public partnership counterpart funding, and the centralization of the staffing budget requirements of Congress, Supreme Court and other constitutionally independent agencies.