No votes for RA 10175 authors
Seldom HAS a law been publicly questioned for its unconstitutionality too soon after passage. Such is the unthinkable fate of Republic Act 10175, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, against which already nine, and counting, petitions from various sectors have been filed with the high court.
The kind of laws one authors or sponsors in Congress is unarguably that which best qualifies, or disqualifies, him to be called congressman or senator. Thus, I lost no time to find out who were behind this controversial act, which is a consolidation of Senate Bill 2796 and House Bill 5808. Nine lawmakers cosponsored the bill in each chamber. Among them only one senator is seeking reelection and one congressman is aspiring for a Senate seat in next year’s elections. To some extent, this finding was a personal relief for me. For I only have two names to replace in the list of 12 senatorial candidates—which includes these two—that I have already completed for the May 2013 polls. That said, I am not necessarily campaigning against both, otherwise I would have named them here. At any rate, it would be too easy to identify them if one wishes.
Suffice it to say that maybe—well, just maybe—I can still vote for a lawmaker who has been virtually a good for nothing in the last Congress, except for the probes he practically called on any public issue under the sun in aid of legislation (though no law ever emanated from those probes); or who loves to appear in television talk shows (including interviews about his emerging intimacy with this or that show biz personality); or who prides to build in his district, using pork barrel funds, such miniscule projects as basketball courts, short feeder roads, commuters’ waiting sheds (in road sections the police are likely to put “no loading/unloading” signs later) or to renovate an existing public school building (though still good and needing no repairs) just so he could change and insert his name into its old, if not new, name to be etched for eternity in shining gold or silver letters. Quite unfortunately, these are the breed of lawmakers we have in our midst and times, from which, alas, we are compelled to choose at least a few, lest we left too many spaces blank in our ballot.
But I can’t include a “lawmaker,” kuno, who crafts an unconstitutional law such as RA 10175!
—RUDY L. CORONEL,
[email protected]
