LTTE: re Rep. Mariano’s attacks on Marcos bill

The recent Inquirer article on left-wing solons fighting over the rights compensation bill (January 8, 2005) is an excellent opportunity to correct an apparent misunderstanding of the bill through assertions made by neophyte Rep. Rafael Mariano, obviously oblivious of the process the bill had gone through since the filing of two separate bills on the rights compensation by Akbayan and Bayan Muna in the opening of the 13th Congress.

Two versions of the bill (Akbayan’s HB 1319 and Bayan Muna’s HB 2962) have been filed and consolidated into Committee Report 117 on House Bill 3315, which was entered into the Record of Business of the House Journal in plenary session before Congress went into recess last December 17.

The Committee members who signed the Committee Report, which contained the consolidated compensation bill included, among others, Reps. Satur Ocampo, Joel Virador, and Liza Maza, who are current members of the Committee on Human Rights. Mariano is a co-author of the Bayan Muna bill.

To set the record straight, the consolidated bill underwent a series of deliberations both at the technical working group and Committee levels. In every Committee and TWG meeting, Bayan Muna and Selda, together or separately, participated in all deliberations of Committee and TWG meetings. PCGG Chair Haydee Yorac was present in both the TWG and Committee meetings to guide us on some technical and legal issues involving the bill.

One of the contentious issues involved the “automatic” inclusion of the 9,539 class suit claimants and direct action plaintiffs who won $1.9 billion in compensatory and exemplary damages in the Honolulu Court back in 1995. Chair Yorac correctly advised the Committee that there cannot be a conclusive presumption that the plaintiffs in the Hawaii case are HRV victims for purposes of the bill. They have to go through the process of screening by the Compensation Board to be set up under the bill. Even in the Hawaii case itself, fake or redundant claimants were discovered.

The challenge that Mariano must instead focus his attention to is the immediate passage of the bill, and helping ensure that the Compensation Board, once constituted dispenses with its duties with speed and justice. That would be a healthier exercise of his authority as an elected official instead of swinging with fiery, but misleading and empty rhetoric against other legislators just doing their jobs.

Rep. Loretta Ann P. Rosales
AKBAYAN