Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 19) — The leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to abandon the bill seeking to grant a provisional franchise to ABS-CBN and instead directed the House Legislative Franchises Committee to start hearings on the grant of a fresh 25-year franchise to the media giant.
“Kung hindi po natin kayang desisyunan na tayo lang, bakit hindi natin i-involve ang publiko? May social media naman, nandiyan naman ang media na nakabantay. Bakit hindi po tayo mag-hearing?” Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano said Tuesday, addressing the House.
[Translation: If we can’t decide on this on our own, why don’t we involve the public? Social media is there, the media is there watching. Why don’t we have a hearing?]
Cayetano urged lawmakers to multi-task, citing the numerous bills that need to be tackled other than the ABS-CBN franchise, especially those dealing with the COVID-19 crisis.
“The hearings must be fair, impartial, comprehensive and thorough,” Cayetano said, appealing to lawmakers to give the House Legislative Franchises Committee autonomy in its deliberation of the measure.
House Majority Leader Martin Romualdez said various lawmakers have crossed party lines supporting the move of the House leadership to shelve the provisional franchise bill and instead directly tackle the grant of a fresh 25-year franchise to ABS-CBN.
The move to drop the bill granting a five-month provisional franchise to ABS-CBN came after the House recalled its passage on second reading, after some lawmakers raised that the process may be in violation of the Constitution.
The House leadership had insisted that passing the bill on first and second reading on the same day did not violate the Constitution, but gave in to calls to recall the measure to allow for more debates on it.
Cayetano said he hoped that dropping the provisional bill and deliberating instead on granting a new franchise for ABS-CBN would have been a good compromise. But he admitted opposing camps on the issue were still “toxic.”
“I still believe that we need to be united as one nation and set aside all non-urgent, highly contentious issues that will tear us apart,” he said. “Politics should not be our main concern right now.”
