BAGUIO CITY — The Cordillera region’s leaders are confident that the autonomy bill pending before Congress will be passed with the election of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as new Speaker of the House of Representatives.
“We are hoping that Speaker Arroyo can help us,” Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan said in the Ilocano dialect in a late afternoon press conference here on Wednesday. “We are just waiting for the reorganization in the Lower House if something like that would happen. We are getting an appointment with her and whoever will be, if they will not change Congressman Rodolfo Farinas as majority floor leader and Congressman Pedro Acharon, chairman of the committee on local governments.”
Domogan also chairs the Cordillera Regional Development Council (RDC), the highest policy-making body of the region.
“Let us help our congressmen push for our autonomy bill to be calendared,” Domogan said, citing that the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) was passed by both Houses of Congress and has already been signed by the President.
He stressed both the BOL and the Cordillera autonomy being pushed are hinged on Section 15 of Article 10 of the 1987 Constitution.
“We are hopeful that Speaker GMA and other officials of the House will help our congressmen because all of them unanimously authored the House Bill on Cordillera autonomy.”
He also cited in the press briefing the latest information from RDC co-chairman and National Economic Development Authority Regional Director Milagros Rimando that Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito is going to co-author Senate Bill 1678, together with Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri, who expressed support and filed the bill at the Upper Chamber of Congress.
Domogan expressed confidence that there will be other senators, who will help push for Cordillera autonomy. “I am sure there will be those other senators who will join them,” he said.
Recalling President Rodrigo Duterte’s State of the Nation Address, he said he and other leaders of the upland region were all hoping that Cordillera autonomy would be mentioned. But it was not.
“I was hoping that it would be mentioned because the information that reached me before the SONA was that Cordillera autonomy would be one of the priorities,” he said, but urged Cordillerans who hope for self-determination not to be discouraged and continue pushing for it.
In a related development, the mayor underscored that the Cordillera will enjoy greater benefits in an autonomous region compared to being a federated region under the proposal of the Consultative Committee (Con|Com0 created by President Rodrigo R. Duterte to review the necessary amendments to the 1987 Constitution.
Under the federated region proposal of the ConCom, the proposed Cordillera federated region will be receiving some P50 billion funding assistance from the federal government to sustain its operation aside from the assistance that it will receive from the equalization fund that will be established as an aid for less developed federated regions which have yet to be computed.
However, Domogan argued that under House Bill (HB) 5343 and Senate Bill (SB) 1789 or the pending bills that seek to establish an autonomous region in the Cordillera, local governments will continue to get their internal revenue allotment (IRA) which amount to over P14 billion annually, the regional line agencies will continue to be provided their operational budgets that amount to over P40 billion for this year aside from the internally generated income of local governments that have a total of P10 billion, the projected share of the autonomous region from the taxes collected by the national government that account for P17 billion as well as the over P75 billion subsidy that will be given by the national government to the autonomous region for a period of ten years.
He added that under the proposed federal charter, the status of employment of state workers distributed in the different line agencies is silent while under the proposed autonomy bills, it has been clearly provided that they will remain to be nationally paid and will be implementing programs, projects and activities relevant to the growth and development of the autonomous region.
More importantly, he explained that whatever benefits of the federated regions granted by the federal government will still be enjoyed by the autonomous region in the Cordillera specially the allocation of two senators for every federated region considering that the Organic Act will serve as appendix Ordinance No. 3 of the federal charter.**PNA with Dexter A. See on the comparison of benefits
