Either the distinguished officials of the Bureau of Customs and the Department of Finance think it is an objective of the Arroyo administration to turn the country into a nation of idiots, or they think we have already taken that turn some time ago. Finance Secretary Margarito Teves’ controversial Department Order No. 17-09, drafted and issued based on the recommendation of a working group under Undersecretary Estela Sales, imposes new restrictions on the importation of books into the Philippines. These restrictions are unconstitutional, violative of international law—and against the country’s best interests.

We assume that it is in the country’s best interests to form a thinking citizenry, because democracy, if it is to endure in the new century, requires the highly informed consent of the governed. It must be in the country’s best interests, therefore, to encourage the easy traffic in ideas that the duty-free importation of books makes possible.

Even if our quota-haunted economic managers do not share this basic outlook, however, there is still the law to reckon with. And on the level of the fundamental law, of international law and of ordinary law, Department Order No. 17-09 is a rank violation.
What, exactly, does Department Order No. 17-09 do? First, it makes an appalling distinction between imports classified as “educational, technical, scientific, historical or cultural books/materials” for non-profit purposes (which can be brought into the country without duties), and the same class of imports that are “for sale, barter or hire” (which will now be levied a 1-percent duty).

Second, it makes an avaricious distinction between the class of imported books specified in the paragraph above and all other books imported into the country (which will now be levied a 5-percent duty).

Third, it makes an absurd distinction between all other books and “books or raw materials to be used in book publishing” (which, under the DOF’s squint-eyed reading of the Book Publishing Industry Development Act of 1995 or RA 8047, will be the only class of imported books entitled to zero duty).

These distinctions, and the new restrictions they lead to, violate the Constitution, because they privilege a mere order of an executive department over congressional legislation—in this case, RA 8047. What the 1995 law did was to simplify the regulatory framework governing the book industry; in doing so, it dramatically expanded the scope of the duty-free importation of books which has been in force in the country since 1952.

One of the dynamic innovations in RA 8047 was to expand the coverage of the landmark Florence Agreement, to include all imported books. What Department Order No. 17-09 has done, however, is to greedily narrow the scope of duty-free importation, not only beyond the innovations of RA 8047 but even beyond the conventions of the Florence Agreement itself.

The DOF order thus also violates international law—in particular, the UNESCO’s Florence Agreement—by limiting the zero-duty classification to “educational, technical, scientific, historical or cultural books/materials” imported for non-profit purposes. This is an appalling distinction, because it largely negates the spirit of the Agreement (which is to encourage, in the wake of a catastrophic world war started by totalitarian governments, the free flow of information and a free market of ideas). And as any informed citizen knows, the international covenants the Philippine government enters into have the force of law in the Philippines.

Department Order No. 17-09 is also legally invalid because it deliberately misreads a key provision—offering incentives for book development!—in RA 8047: The clause “In the case of tax and duty-free importation of books or raw materials to be used in book publishing” the legal luminaries at the DOF and the BOC have chosen to interpret as narrowing the scope of the duty-free incentive to “books to be used in book publishing.” This is an absurd construction of the obvious meaning of the law, and can be justified only if the DOF and BOC officials deliberately remove their thinking caps before they enter the assessor’s office.

Time for publishers, book readers and democracy’s defenders to throw the book (legally, if not quite literally) at them.