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Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor PATRICK PANGILINAN Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

Last week, just before the trial went on a break, a non-government organization asked the House of Representatives to proceed with the plenary debates on pending legislation and not be distracted by the ongoing impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona. “The impeachment case is now in the hands of the senators, House members should now concentrate on the legislations that were set aside when they went into recess”, said Ramon San Pascual of the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development.

While Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. has assured the people that the impeachment trial would not disrupt the work in the House, it is still highly probable that our representatives in the lower house will still be bitten by the nation’s obsession in monitoring the televised developments of the historic impeachment trial and that could very well delay important debates on pending legislation.

Only congressmen who are acting as prosecutors in the impeachment case are still heavily involved in the process and a large majority of the House of Representatives are no longer directly involved, so therefore it shouldn’t be a problem for them to return their attention to the numerous tasks and pending pieces of legislation at hand. If our congressmen can act with the same haste and focus that they gave the articles of impeachment when they passed it in record time, maybe they can also act with the same sense of urgency and dispatch towards the other pending laws that have spent years, if not decades in the legislative limbo that can be described as Congress.

Too many pending laws have already spent too much time trapped in the halls of Congress. Common sense says that if our Congressmen are not prodded to get back to work ASAP and reminded not be distracted by the impeachment circus, they will probably spend the whole afternoon glued to TV sets monitoring, either laughing out loud or wincing, at the developments of the trial. We hope that they keep our lofty expectations in mind as they buckle down and get back to the task of legislating laws.*