MANILA, 31 July — More than eight hours and dozens of hamburgers and balut later, Monday’s impasse at the Philippine Senate was finally resolved in the wee hours yesterday, after administration senators agreed to a compromise resolution acceptable to the opposition.
The resolution tacitly recognized the opposition’s “rump” sessions on June 3-6 during which four bills were passed.
Senate President Franklin Drilon said these were the Anti-Chainsaw Act and the Free Patent Law, both authored by Sen. Robert Jaworski, and the Philippine-Spanish Day Law sponsored by Sen. Edgardo Angara.
A fourth bill, the proposed Absentee Voting Law, will be brought back to the floor for more deliberation to give administration senators a chance to raise questions.
Overseas Filipinos, including the more than 800,000 contract workers in Saudi Arabia, will be allowed to vote in their country's national elections once the bill is enacted into law.
For their part, the opposition senators recognized the “primacy and authority” of the administration senators, including their authority to resolve and dispose of matters other than the four contested bills.
The “win-win formula” was in a one-page resolution adopted by all 23 senators present and signed past midnight.
Asked who broached the formula, Angara said: “We all did.”
Earlier, Drilon had declared Monday’s session “Ople Day,” saying both sides had agreed to listen to the valedictory speech of Sen. Blas Ople, who assumed the foreign affairs portfolio yesterday.
Shortly after Ople’s speech, however, Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel attempted to put the validity of the June 3-6 sessions to a vote, prompting Drilon to immediately suspend the session at 5:30 p.m. despite the protests of the opposition.
Chaos ensued, with the administration senators, numbering only 11 with the absence of Sen. Robert Barbers who was in Surigao, refusing to re-enter the session hall.
The opposition senators stood their ground, however, kept their vigil and waited patiently for the majority senators, who were in the Senate lounge, to return.
Majority Leader Loren Legarda Leviste later told a press conference it was the longest suspension of a Senate session in history but also the “most fruitful.”
Legarda and Pimentel acted as bridges from both sides to end the impasse.
“After the suspension, no one was talking. One group was camped out there, the other was holed up in another place,” recalled Legarda.
While only the proposed Absentee Voting Law was recalled for more debates, its proponents from both the administration and opposition urged OFWs not to worry because the debate is just for the purpose of refinement.
Pimentel said there’s not way Congress could deny overseas Filipinos the right to vote. “It’s a shame because we have been talking about their big contribution to the Philippine economy but we have been denying them their right to vote, which is provided for in the Philippine Constitution,” Pimentel had said.
The number of potential votes from overseas Filipinos continues to increase, according to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).
Rosalinda Baldoz, the administrator of POEA, said yesterday that more than 2,600 Filipinos left the Philippines everyday for the past seven months to work overseas.
She said a total of 533,318 Filipino workers have been deployed abroad since January. “The overseas Filipino worker (OFW) deployment reached 2,640 daily from January 1 to July 21, exceeding by 4.1 percent the 2,536 OFWs deployed in the same period last year,” she said.
Baldoz said among the top destinations for overseas Filipino workers were the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Kuwait and other Middle Eastern countries.
She, however, noted a decline in deployment of workers in Brunei, Hong Kong and Italy.
The government has been promoting overseas employment for thousands of Filipinos who have been unable to find work in the country amid a sluggish local economy.
The country’s unemployment rate was at a two-year high of 13.9 percent in April.
The increase in OFW deployment has resulted in a 45.3 percent rise in dollar remittances in the first four months of the year.
The central bank said the actual remittances from overseas Filiinos from January to April rose to $2.8 billion from $1.9 billion in the same period last year.
In April alone, dollar earnings sent by Filipino workers reached $863 million.
The central bank said the dollar remittances have helped meet the foreign currency requirements of local companies, easing pressure on the peso. (With reports from Agencies)
