OPENING STATEMENT OF SEN. GRACE POE
Committee Hearing on Emergency Powers
10 August 2016
Good morning. Magandang umaga po sa inyong lahat. The meeting of the Committee on Public Services will now come to order.
I would like to manifest for the record that the Committee on Public Services has a total of eleven (11) members. Our Vice Chair is Sen. JV Ejercito. And our members include Senators Richard Gordon, Loren Legarda, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Bam Aquino, Manny Pacquiao, Panfilo Lacson, Joel Villanueva, Chiz Escudero, and Antonio Trillanes IV. Our Ex-Officio members include Senate President Pro-Tempore Franklin Drilon, Majority Leader Tito Sotto and Minority Leader Ralph Recto.
This morning, I would like to acknowledge, with gratitude, the presence of my colleagues…
With a total of [7] members present, the Chair declares the presence of a quorum.
This is our first committee meeting. So before anything else, I would like to present for the adoption of the body, the Rules of the Senate, as the committee’s internal rules. (Sen. JV Ejercito makes a motion to adopt the rules)
There is a motion for the adoption of the Rules of the Senate as the Committee’s Internal Rules
Is there any objection? Hearing none, the motion is approved. The Rules of the Senate is hereby adopted to serve as the Internal Rules of the Committee on Public Services.
For the information of all those present, the jurisdiction of the committee on Public Services includes all matters affecting public services and utilities; communications; land, air, river and sea transportation including railroads, inter-island navigation, and lighthouses; and the grant or amendment of legislative franchises.
In the area of transportation, I believe our primordial concern should be to address the plight of long suffering commuters and prioritize their welfare and interest.
I personally believe that our long-term transportation plan should be anchored on a vision of an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban settlements. The time is now to develop an integrated multi-modal transport system, pursue innovative and data-driven transport solutions, and improve transportation governance.
Thus, among the bills and resolutions that have been referred to the committee so far, we have chosen to prioritize consideration of those measures that propose to give emergency powers to the President to address the transportation and traffic crisis.
The bills and resolutions on granting emergency powers to the President have been primarily referred to the Committee on Public Services, and secondarily referred to the Committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes; and Committee on Finance.
These bills include the following:
Senate Bill No. 11 introduced by Senator Drilon;
Senate Bill No. 154 introduced by Senator Ejercito;
Senate Bill No. 999 introduced by Senator Cayetano;
Proposed Senate Resolution No. 33, introduced by Senator Recto;
Proposed Senate Resolution No. 63, introduced by Senator Recto;
Proposed Senate Resolution No. 63 introduced by Senator Ejercito.
We shall now commence our joint public hearing.
Muli, magandang umaga sa lahat ng naririto at maraming salamat na nakarating kayo sa pagdinig ngayong araw.
In fact, the people in this room can be divided into two groups: those who came in early and those who were “na-traffic.” I must thank our resource persons who are here—complete and on time and also our senators.
If the latter is slowly becoming the acceptable national excuse –ang pambansang dahilan –for tardiness, it is because in many cases there’s basis in invoking it.
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We don’t need statistics to prove how traffic has gone from bad to worse in Mega Manila and other parts of the country. Cars move in glacial pace. If you’re lucky to hit 30 kilometers per hour in EDSA, then you’re lucky.
The only hope for fast mode of travel – the trains – have been derailed by old equipment or the lack of it, poor maintenance , and the culprit that slows train service–bureaucratic inertia .
People, including kids who should still be asleep, now wake up before dawn to catch an MRT train that can still accommodate passengers only to realize that the time to queue for a ticket is now longer than the train ride itself.
And they who rise before sunrise have to go through a harrowing commute just so they can be home by midnight.
Nakikipagsiksikan sa bus, hinahabol ang taxi, kakandong sa UV, bibitin sa estribo ng jeep, kokontrata ng pedicab, o manghuhuli ng Grab or Uber na tila mailap na Pokemon sila.
The sad reality is that for many, the time spent for rest is less than the time spent on the road.
They also say that it is now faster to fly across the ocean than to drive across town. But not anymore because there is also congestion in the air. Pati sa ere may traffic din.
As anyone who had recently taken a flight out of NAIA would tell you, the time spent by a plane queuing for take-off is sometimes longer than the actual flight itself.
Simply put, our mandate is to create a system which transports our people and their products, the nation’s commuters as well as its commerce, in a manner that is safe, reliable, accessible and affordable.
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As you know, the services enumerated in our committee’s mandate happens to be this government’s priority .
And the pressure for them to deliver is great but the burden is not theirs alone but ours too because we serve the same people who gifted us with the same mandate to serve.
Thus, let me assure our friends in the executive that we will not be competing with you in finding problems, we will be cooperating with you in finding solutions.
In capsule form—extraordinary problems require extraordinary powers to solve. The rule on such request for great powers has always been: The President proposes. Congress disposes.
We will soon wade into the details of the bills, and carefully study its provisions, with no other motive but to improve it. We must be open to innovative solutions and be ready to think out of the box. But though we are open to innovation, we must also be responsible with our actions.
Giving the president emergency powers necessarily raises concerns about concentration of powers in one person as this could easily be abused. There are fears that if we grant emergency powers for this issue, then we open the floodgates to granting emergency powers for other so-called “crisis” or “emergencies”.
