Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Supreme Court likens LCP to wicked siblings

By Estanislao Albano, Jr.

TABUK CITY, Kalinga – Almost half of the members of the League of Cities of the Philippines (LCP) which are questioning the legality of the cityhood of the 16 new cities in the Supreme Court (SC) because, among others, they do not qualify under RA 9009 cannot satisfy the requirements of that law themselves if the same were to be applied to them.
This is just one of the things mentioned in the ruling of the SC granting the motion for reconsideration of the 16 new cities against the earlier decision of the court reverting to its original ruling that the conversion of the 16 erstwhile towns is unconstitutional.
RA 9009 which was passed in June 2001 while the bills converting the 16 towns into cities were already pending in Congress fixed P100,000,000.00 as the local income requirement for a town aspiring to become a city.
According to the ruling penned by Justice Lucas Bersamin, 59 of the 122 members of the LCP have local revenues lower than the minimum set by RA 9009 which, according to the resolution, only showed that a city could function even with a local income lower than P100,000,000.00.
About the amount of P100,000,000.00, the ruling commented that it was arbitrarily set and that it’s intention was purely to make it extremely difficult for towns to convert into cities.
To highlight what it calls the arbitrariness and absurdity of the imposition, the court pointed out that the annual income requirement for highly urbanized cities which rank higher than component cities is only P50,000,000.00.
The records of the proceedings in the Senate wherein Senator Aquilino Pimentel declared that Senate Bill 2157 if it becomes a law will not retroact to the cityhood bills then pending in Congress was also mentioned in the ruling.
The court also pointed out that there is no truth to the allegation of the LCP that there will be a substantial reduction of their internal revenue allotment (IRA) due to the entry of the 16 new cities because their IRAs even increased in 2008, the year after the conversion of the new cities.
Taking note of the LCP’s complaint about the effect of the conversion of the 16 new cities in their capacity to carry out projects and deliver services without giving any thought to the problems of the new cities arising from the obligations they entered into as component cities, the court likened the LCP into “elder siblings wanting to kill the newly-borns so that their inheritance would not be diminished.”
In a related development, in a full page ad in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Estelito Mendoza, the lead counsel of the 16 new cities, published in full his letter dated June 19, 2009 addressed to then Chief Justice Reynato Puno which the LCP allege as a “secret letter” and which had asked the court to uphold the constitutionality of the 16 new cities.
The letter requested that the motion for reconsideration of the respondent cities be considered and resolved with the participation of all members of the court in compliance with the constitutional requirement that constitutional questions be decided by the court en banc.
Mendoza claimed that there was nothing secret about the letter because it was officially filed with the office of the Chief Justice with each member of the court furnished a copy.
“Distortion of truth by the League of Cities must be exposed lest, as has been said, ‘when falsehood is repeated often enough, the lie becomes the truth.’” **

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