“Miriam, sleep in peace but pray for us” were the simple loving words that retired Bishop Teodoro Bacani Jr. used in sending off former Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago to her final rest last Sunday afternoon.
She knew very well that our country “needs much more correcting and reforming.” Thus, he also asked her to help us complete “what she’s not been able to finish in life” when she stands “at the side of Lord Jesus in Heaven.”
We have similar thoughts and prayers, even if we had already conceded much earlier that she would no longer become the Dragon Lady President that she had thrice aspired to be.
Still, she would always be the “best president we never had.”
In fact, she has left a pending bill—Senate Bill No. 1903—which we hope her former colleagues at the Senate would still pursue and enact into law.
She sponsored this bill for the first time 11 years ago on Feb. 3, 2005 in the 13th Congress and gave it the long descriptive title of “An Act Granting Old-Age Pension for Life to Senior Citizens-RA 1616 Retirees as Well as Survivorship Benefits to their Survivors, Amending for the Purpose Pertinent Provisions of the Second Paragraph of Section 12 (c) of Commonwealth Act 186, As Amended.”
For short, she just wanted it to be known as the “Government Service Retirement Rationalization Act of 2005.”
She was convincing—and as usual, flamboyant—in justifying the passage of her proposed pension bill through clear legal logic and out of compassion for senior citizens who retired under RA 1616.
She even outlined in her Explanatory Note how their previous GSIS contributions had accumulated into billions of actuarial reserves to fund her proposed pension benefits.
Thus, she wrote –
“What is even worse is that there is a class of elderly retired government employees under the lump sum, take-all gratuity system pursuant to RA 1616 who do not receive at all even a meager monthly pension. This class of now elderly former public servants, still numbering in the thousands all over the country, are lamentably existing at predominantly near-pauper, if miserable, lives surviving only out of the generosity of equally hard-pressed kin, if any. Because their meager, hence, ephemeral take-all gratuity received many years back from their respective last employers, instead of from the GSIS, under a deviant retirement scheme (RA 1616)—that attempted to deviate from the ideally prescribed annuity system of retirement by way of monthly Old-Age Pension for Life plus Survivorship Benefits, administered by the GSIS pursuant to the circa 1936 CA 186, as amended by among others RA 660, PD 1146 and RA 8291—with its tempting allure in the guise of its “lump sum” delusion, have long been exhausted in catching upwith the ever-increasing expenses of surviving over all these inflation-ridden years.”
In simpler words, these government employees were tempted into opting to receive their retirement benefits in one lump sum in exchange for lifetime monthly pensions that extend to their survivors from the Government Service Insurance System.
They have spent away those lump-sum benefits, and now are poor and dependent on relatives and friends.
Citing Section 48 of PD 1146, as amended by Section 55 of RA 8291, she pointed out, however, that “if the benefits provided by law chosen are less than the benefits provided underthis Act, the GSIS shall pay the difference.”
She also quoted from Section 6 of RA 7432 that “retirement benefits from…government shall be upgraded at par with the current scale enjoyed by those in actual service.”
These arguments, she concluded, justified their receipt from GSIS of additional monthly pensions under RA 8291.
Her proposal was complicated, but when simplified it considered previous lump sum payments as partial pension payments, which, would be resumed by GSIS later—subject to certain conditions—as regular monthly pensions.
Take, for example, a retiree who received 10 years ago a lump sum benefit of P1 million under RA 1616. If he were entitled to a P10,000 monthly pension under RA 8291, he should have received a total of P1,200,000 or P10,000 monthly pensions in the past 120 months. Having already received P1 million, he would still get the difference of P200,000 plus a lifetime monthly pension of P10,000 starting immediately.
Her unfinished work could still be completed. In fact, Senator Chiz Escudero has filed a similar proposal last July 4—Senate Bill No. 279—entitled “An Act to Grant Monthly Pension to Government Retirees Under R.A. 1616 Who Have Reached the Age of Seventy (70) Years, Appropriating Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes.”
His bill, however, leaves to GSIS the determination of the appropriate monthly pension and is an emasculated version of her unfinished work.
Thus, if and when our senators deliberate on his bill, they should not miss incorporating most of the provisions of Senator Miriam’s proposed pension bill.
That way, they could complete her unfinished work, and honor her beyond expressing their appreciation for her through empty words and now—worthless tributes.