BAGUIO CITY– The persistent lobbying of autonomy advocates gained a giant step after the leadership of the House Committee on Local Government decided to schedule the hearing of House Bill (HB) 5687 or the bill that seeks to establish the Autonomous Region in the Cordillera (ARC) on September 29, 2020.
However, Milagros Rimando, regional director of the Cordillera office of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA-CAR) and vice chairperson of the Regional Development Council (RDC), said that the hearing will be done virtual pursuant to the established health and safety protocols in the House of Representatives, thus, key resource persons will be participating online that will allow the greater participation from the local government officials and the private sector to help convince the members of the House Committee to facilitate the approval of the same in their level.
She added that the RDC-CAR in partnership with the private sector and autonomy advocates had constantly been making representations with the leadership of the House committee on local government to calendar HB 5687 for initial hearing as part of the efforts to advance the deliberations of the proposed measure while working out the possibility of securing a certification from the Office of the President that the autonomy bill is one of the priority administration measures.
The NEDA-CAR official stated that the scheduling of the hearing of the proposed autonomy bill will provide the avenue for autonomy advocates to assert the importance of converting the present special temporary administrative region into an autonomous region pursuant to the mandate of the 1987 Constitution.
Earlier, the secretariat of the House committee coordinated with the RDC secretariat to prepare the pertinent documents required by the body to facilitate speedy action on the pending bill.
Among the documents that had been readied by the RDC-Car include the resolutions from the 7 provinces, 2 cities and 77 municipalities that strongly supports the immediate passage of HB 5687 to facilitate the creation and establishment of the ARC during the incumbency of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Rimando added that close coordination is also being done by the RDC-CAR with the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office (PLLO) for the eventual issuance of the certification that HB 5687 is a priority administration measure to facilitate the speedy passage of the proposed autonomy bill for the signature of the President.
HB 5687 that seeks to establish the ARC was authored by all the Cordillera congressmen after a series of consultations with autonomy advocates as the realization of autonomy will pave the way for the region having greater control of its existing resources with lesser restraint from outside forces whereby policies that will be formulated by the regional government will be applicable to the current state of the region unlike what is happening at the present where policies emanated from the central government without considering the situation of a certain area. By Hent