By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
Alongside the grief wrought by this sweeping COVID-19 pandemic on our nation’s most frail kababayan, I weep over our dearly departed House of Representatives. Yes, I can confirm by the vital signs that the Batasan has likely left this world.
How else can it not be, when its utterly outrageous version of a fact-finding panel into the Pharmally anomaly is begone of both heart and spirit? While an impassioned Senate has exposed the scheming of an undercapitalized pharmaceutical firm to snare billions of pesos in supply contracts through conniving government agents, the House hearings have exonerated it.
By its members’ lawyering for the President, this august chamber of Congress has lost its very life as a co-equal arbiter of good governance. Checks and balances, on account of a House mainly allied with an administration it defends to no end, are therefore dead.
What news value is there to be breathed out of the Batasan if its probe is a total fake? It has been abandoned of sound reason as its pulse beats only to the tune of Malacanang. So for me, the House is dead.
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I’ll tell you, though, what keeps the House alive with an adrenalin rush – E-Sabong!
A media colleague who used to be a congressman himself said it makes him sick to see how solons at the Batasan have prioritized the E-Sabong Bill in the middle of a life-threatening pandemic.
Last weekend, Angelo Palmones of AGHAM called out the House Committees on Legislative Franchises and on Ways and Means for prioritizing the passage of a bill facilitating electronic sabong (cockfighting) or e-sabong when they should be finding ways to maximize the government’s pandemic response.
The primary beneficiary of this House Bill No.10199 (the proposed Act granting Lucky 8 Star Quest Inc. a franchise to operate offsite betting activities on duly-licensed cockfighting, derbies, and other similar activities through online or other modern means, anywhere in the Philippines) is none other than ex-convict Charlie “Atong” Ang.
“Ang, the man behind Pitmasters Live games, is also the one who runs Lucky 8 Star Quest. So this bill could very well be called ‘Atong’s franchise,'” Palmones said. And I agree because out of the companies that have sought a franchise to operate from the House, only Lucky 8’s request for a 25-year franchise was approved at the committee level.
As I said, the House has lost it! Instead of thinking up support measures to beat a pandemic that has killed thousands of Filipinos in the past two years, it has devoted its precious time in lawmaking to approve e-sabong, which, Palmones said, “has destroyed a lot of Filipino homes and families and will continue to do so.”
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SHORT BURSTS. For comments or reactions, email firingline@ymail.com or tweet @Side_View. Read current and past issues of this column at https://www.thephilbiznews.com
