Shortly after ABS-CBN shutdown order,House legislative franchise committee said to summon NTC officials to explain why they should not be cited in contempt.
The speedy reaction was in contrast to committee dragging its feet on tackling the franchise renewal. #NoToABSCBNShutDown
The speedy reaction was in contrast to committee dragging its feet on tackling the franchise renewal. #NoToABSCBNShutDown
The Lower House, where franchise bills should emanate, had all the time in the world to deliberate on bills seeking to renew ABS-CBN’s license. These bills were filed since 2016, or even earlier, but lawmakers sat on them while President Duterte was attacking the network.
When Alan Peter Cayetano, a Duterte ally, became House Speaker last year, he evaded questions on when to schedule franchise hearings, saying deliberations would need to be “thorough”, without ever committing to a hearing schedule.
Legislators at the Lower House had been passing the buck, with interviews at the height of the issue last February circling on comments like wanting to finish already the deliberations, to awaiting signals from the House leadership on when to press ahead.
Malacanang, pressed against the wall about the publicly-known ire of Duterte vs ABS-CBN, distanced itself by saying the job to renew the franchise rests on Congress populated by the President’s allies.
A franchise bill needs the President’s signature, by the way.
A franchise bill needs the President’s signature, by the way.
The Senate, meanwhile, supposedly cannot start hearings on the bill because just like tax laws, franchises should emanate from the House, where lawmakers were still not yet talking about a hearing schedule.
At the height of franchise issue last Feb., the House franchise committee even made rather ceremonial move of supposedly garnering positions for and against ABS-CBN franchise renewal. This is something that could have easily been done in hearings, which had not been scheduled.
Finally in March 10, and amid public clamor, the Lower House dedicated a rather token hearing for the franchise renewal. The time of the hearing was again wasted on supposed setting of rules for “future hearings” which by the way, were still not yet scheduled.
Congress went on break after and by the time session resumed last May 4, when old franchise expired, everyone is already distracted by the pandemic. Lawmakers banked on regulators’ commitment to keep ABS-CBN on air, until the government’s lawyer, Jose Calida, entered the picture.
Calida made a last-ditch effort to convince regulators it would be illegal to permit ABS-CBN to air under a provisional license. That effort, of course, came as his high court petition to invalidate the old franchise effectively became moot when the license lapsed.
The rest, we already know. NTC officials struggling to explain their change of tune to order the cessation of ABS-CBN’s operations. As we are seeing now, lawmakers are supposedly coming to the network’s defense, saying all things except one: a hearing schedule for the franchise.
