Plebiscite on splitting Palawan into 3 provinces set for 2020

Palawan will not be a single province anymore, but only if the law dividing it into three is approved in a plebiscite.

Republic Act No. 11259 divides the country’s westernmost province into Palawan del Norte, Palawan Oriental and Palawan del Sur.

President Rodrigo Duterte signed the law on April 5, but Malacañang made it public only on Saturday.

The plebiscite is set for the second Monday of May 2020. The new provinces would be created if approved “by majority of the votes cast by the voters of the affected areas.”

The law is unclear, however, on what will happen if majority in one of the proposed provinces votes against it.

Puerto Princesa City, the current capital, will not take part in the plebiscite or in future elections in any of the new provinces as it will have its own district representative.

New composition

Under the law, Palawan del Norte will be composed of Coron, Culion, Busuanga, Linapacan, Taytay and El Nido. Taytay will be its capital.

Roxas, Araceli, Dumaran, Cuyo, Agutaya, Magsaysay, Cagayancillo and San Vicente will comprise Palawan Oriental with Roxas as the capital.

Brooke’s Point will be the capital of Palawan del Sur, which was designated as the “mother province” that will also include Aborlan, Narra, Quezon, Rizal, Española, Bataraza, Balabac and Kalayaan, whose only barangay is Pag-Asa Island in the South China Sea.

Each new province will have its own legislative district and will have a governor, vice governor and Sangguniang Panlalawigan.

The representatives of the first, second and third legislative districts who will be elected in the May 2019 elections will continue to represent their respective areas until the representatives of the newly created legislative districts for the three new provinces have been elected also in the May 2022 polls.

The three provinces shall be entitled to equitable shares in the proceeds from the utilization and development of the national wealth within their respective terrestrial and maritime jurisdiction.

They will have a combined share of not less than 40 percent of the gross collection derived by the national government from mining taxes, royalties, fishery charges and other taxes or fees from the previous year and from its share in any coproduction in the utilization and development of national wealth within their territorial jurisdiction.

Kalayaan is part of the Spratly Islands, which are believed to sit atop natural gas and oil reserves.

Palawan Gov. Jose Alvarez was among those who lobbied for splitting the province into three, saying that would improve local governance and the delivery of public services and spur the island’s growth.

Another proponent of the division of Palawan, Winston G. Arzaga, who is a member of its provincial board and a former vice governor, said the clamor to divide the province started as early as the 1960s.

Writing in Inquirer.net in November last year, Arzaga said the “overriding reason” to divide the province was its huge size that made effective governance “a nightmare.”

According to Sen. Sonny Angara, who had endorsed the original House Bill No. 8055 to the Senate, Palawan is so big that its 17,000-square-kilometer area is five times the size of Batangas. 


Palawan, which has a population of 1.1 million (including Puerto Princesa), also encompasses 1,800 islands, making it an archipelago within an archipelago.

Opposed by civil society

The proposed measure met opposition from some civil society groups, which said it did not undergo proper consultation with the people of Palawan.

The House bill was passed on third reading in only five months after it was filed by the three representatives from the province. After it was handed over to them, the senators approved it  three months later.

Puerto Princesa City Mayor Lucilo Bayron had said he and other city officials had declined an invitation by the law’s proponents to take part in the division campaign. He said the bill would lead to the downgrading of Puerto Princesa as a component city or being chopped up into smaller towns.

In 2012, Republic Act No. 10171 reapportioned the province of Palawan into three legislative districts from the previous two. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1106550/plebiscite-on-splitting-palawan-into-3-provinces-set-for-2020

Tsa-a-bu

It’s not a new game or a new take on peek-a-boo. This term my colleague coined after almost half a ton of shabu packaged as tea (tsa-a) was seized in two operations in a house in posh Ayala Alabang village and at the Port of Manila recently. Unfortunately, the packages used to disguise the shabu looked very much like the tea I buy in my favorite grocery in Binondo which, coincidentally – or maybe not so coincidentally – was unavailable the past couple of weeks. The joke around the office, of course, was that “na-tokhang yung supplier mo (your supplier was busted)!”

And then there are those bricks of cocaine that keep bobbing up around our eastern coastlines. Since cocaine does not seem to be the Pinoy addicts’ drug of choice (who was it who said cocaine is the rich man’s drug, the choice of the party set, while shabu is the poor man’s poison?), authorities reported that all that cocaine was really destined for Australia, and the Philippines was just a transshipment point. That’s bad news all around; do international drug syndicates see us as so “welcoming” for their business?

While we’re at it, can someone please check whether all those drugs – shabu, cocaine, pills, even marijuana – seized in publicized raids are accounted for and securely kept? Just one of those packages of tsa-a-bu can make someone pretty rich.

* * *

So the 2019 national budget – P3.757 trillion – is finally going to be signed tomorrow. At least, as I write this, invitations have reportedly been sent out to Senate and House leaders to attend the signing ceremony tomorrow at the Palace.

Senators and congressmen have been squabbling, not over the merits of the budget, but over their takes, their shares of what is not supposed to be called pork. They have accused each other of hiding or parking their pork in various departments, the favorite being public works and highways, and transferring or re-aligning funds from districts whose representatives are no longer favored to districts that are now the flavor of the month under the new House dispensation.

It all sounds like quarrelling among thieves, fighting over division of the loot. And to think that, aside from what is not supposed to be called their pork, we poor taxpayers are going to spend P20.3 billion for all their salaries, allowances, travels (aside from their junkets paid for by “sponsors”), representation (parties and lunches and dinners), hiring of consultants… What an absolute waste of money!

Take out your calculator and figure out how many families that amount could feed if we get rid of those clowns in Congress. A family of five would need over P10,000 a month to survive, about P8,000 of that for food alone, according to government statisticians. Wouldn’t it be better use of our taxes if we spend the money to provide services to the people instead of funding Congress?

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.      Isaiah 40:21-23

https://www.philstar.com/other-sections/starweek-magazine/2019/04/14/1909766/tsa-bu

Palace: Gov’t prepared if Duterte approves or vetoes 2019 nat’l budget

MANILA – The government is prepared to respond to the economic effects if President Rodrigo Duterte decides to approve or veto the proposed P3.7-trillion 2019 national budget.

Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said the President needs time to decide if he will sign or veto the measure as he is exercising “utmost care” in reviewing the budget to ensure it abides by the Constitution.

“As a lawyer and strict enforcer of the rule of law, the President treads cautiously in performing his constitutional duty making sure before he inks his signature to the document, he does not violate our Constitution, as well as related jurisprudence on the matter,” said Panelo.

“While we are very eager and devoted to implement policies that will benefit Filipinos, this administration is equally committed to being a stickler for the rule of law,” he said.

The palace official assured the public that Duterte’s economic managers are prepared in the event the chief executive approves or rejects the submitted spending plan.

“As to the possible repercussion on the economy of a re-enacted budget, our economic managers have contingency plans prepared, responsive to any conceivable event, and they will correspondingly adjust their targets, which include the execution of programs and projects relating to infrastructure as well as the delivery of basic services to the people,” Panelo said.

In a speech in Bacolod City on Thursday, Duterte said he will carefully scrutinize the contents of the budget bill forwarded by the Congress to Malacañang on March 26.

“Ang budget kasa-submit lang. I have to sign it pagbalik ko pa, pinag-aralan pa, galing Budget [department] to the office of the president. The office of the president is not the Budget so ang legal ko magbasa uli,” said Duterte.

“Hindi magkasundo ang congress pati senado eh. And ‘yung mga insertions diyan titignan ko, pagka tagilid talaga I will not hesitate to veto the entire budget,” he added.

The 2019 national budget bill was originally ratified in early February but remained dormant in the House and not immediately transmitted to the Senate and Malacañang as congressmen said they had to itemize the lump sums.

After an impasse in the Senate, the budget bill was sent last month to Malacañang for the President’s signature after Senate president Vicente Sotto III signed the measure but with reservations.

The Palace had initially scheduled the ceremonial signing of the budget on Monday, April 15 but backtracked on Thursday, saying the ratification may push through after the Holy Week break since the President is still studying the bill.

The government is operating on a re-enacted budget and the Palace and finance officials warned remaining in this setup could affect the country’s economic growth for 2019./PN

https://www.panaynews.net/palace-govt-prepared-if-duterte-vetoes-2019-natl-budget/