"Hypocrisy and dogma aside"
"Hypocrisy and dogma aside"
(Part 1)
The 18th Congress has commenced its work and we have started to hear about the priority bills filed or about to be filed mostly by the allies of President Duterte. As expected, these bills are the Duterte pet bills like the reinstatement of the death penalty and lowering of the age of criminal liability from 15 to 12 years old.
Duterte has the big majority of both Houses of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Knowing how much this president trashes human rights, coupled with the presence of very conservative legislators such as Sotto and Pacquiao in the Senate and a host of others in the HOR, prioritizing bills protecting and strengthening the rights of Filipinos may be a dream.
Still, progressive advocates and human rights defenders besides opposing bills that violate human rights, have also started the work of discussing with select legislators on progressive bills that they will support and push for passage. Indeed, there are progressive lawmakers, and there are also those who may be allied with this administration but have filed and worked on bills that advocates have been also working on.
Many of these bills have been previously filed and went through the legislative process and reached different levels. They will most probably be refiled this Congress. The network of civil society organizations (CSOs) my group works with already have the assurance that friendly legislators will refile most, if not all of the bills included in advocates’ legislative agenda. These are: the Magna Carta of Workers in the Informal Economy (MACWIE); divorce; Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Expression (SOGIE) Equality; Prevention of Teen-age Pregnancy; Domestic Partnerships; and Anti-Child Marriage bills.
The Magna Carta of Workers in the Informal Economy or MACWIE. This bill has been first filed in the thirteenth or fourteenth Congress, and has since been repeatedly refiled by various lawmakers. The bill is very important as it addresses the needs and welfare, and as well as provides for the rights of workers in the informal economy (WIE). MACWIE provides for social protection, representation of WIE in government bodies, labor standards only enjoyed by those formally employed like working hours, minimum wages, and overtime pay among others. Most importantly, MACWIE provides for systems and mechanisms to transition them from informality to formality.
WIE are those workers who are unprotected by existing labor laws. They are the workers that you see day in and day out but do not really mind. Your magtataho; dirty ice cream vendors; magbabalut; market vendors; waste pickers; home-based workers; bus, jeepney, tricycle drivers; small farmers and fisherfolk like the 22 whose boat was rammed by a Chinese ship. There are about 25 million WIE according to studies and most belong to the poorest of the poor. They form the big majority of the working Filipinos yet, they remain invisible and largely unprotected by law.
The previous Senate Committee on Labor has come out with a Committee Report after several meetings but this did not reach Second Reading on the Floor. The HOR Labor Committee only called one meeting on the bill and nothing else moved. It is time for MACWIE to be passed if we are after social justice.
Divorce. The Philippines remains as the only country in the world (outside of the Holy See which I hardly consider as a country) without a divorce law. Surveys show that the majority of Filipinos supports the passage of a divorce law. In the HOR, a progressive divorce law was filed by Rep. Edcel Lagman, also the principal author of the long-contested Reproductive Health (RH) Law.
The bill received tremendous support from the Members, especially women legislators, who in the committee meetings unabashedly offered their own stories as testimonies on why divorce is needed here. Outside of the usual suspects, the women’s rights advocates, there was also a very strong push from overseas Filipino workers who find themselves in complicated situations, especially with the protracted, complicated, and very expensive annulment process here. A good number of women OFWs find their husbands already cohabiting with other women here when they come home pushing them to decide to legally terminate their marriage but find that there are plenty of major roadblocks along the way.
The divorce bill was promptly approved by the Committee on Women and Gender Equality. There were some debates after Rep. Lagman sponsored the Committee Report on the floor but this only lasted for a few weeks. The bill it was approved on Third and Final Reading by the HOR. Unfortunately, there was no counterpart bill in the Senate.
For the 18th Congress, one of the former co-authors in the House is re-elected to the Senate, returning Senator Pia Cayetano. We expect her to file a progressive divorce bill early so processing of the bill will not be delayed. Advocates also expect other progressive senators to file, or co-author, and then, work for the bill’s passage.
The time for a progressive divorce bill to be reenacted is past overdue. We have laws for legal separation which only settles domicile and property relations but does not cut the marriage bonds. We have annulment but this only applies to marriages that are void from the beginning. We do not have an option for legal marriages that have eventually broken down. Hypocrisy and dogma aside, everybody knows that this happens a lot. The 18th Congress must enact a progressive divorce law.
More next week.
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