THE consultative committee (Con-com) tasked to review the 1987 Constitution has decided to elevate the country’s antitrust agency to a full-fledged independent constitutional commission under the federal government.
The committee’s proposal on Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) followed its earlier decision to also elevate the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) as an independent constitutional commission.
Con-com Chairman and retired Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno announced in a speech in a forum on Thursday that they have also elevated the status of PCC, which he deemed as the “most important commission” given the need, he said, for an independent body to ensure that the ban on monopolies and oligopolies in the business sector is enforced, especially “against those whose god is named gold.”
Puno noted that as early as the 1935 Constitution, the country has already prohibited monopolies, but it was only a few years ago that Congress enacted the law creating PCC.
“Be that as it may, the competition commission was placed under the Office of the President. It was therefore vulnerable to the virus of politics and can be used as a tool to favor or harass business for political partisan purposes,” he said. “Just as we leveled the political playing field by prohibiting political dynasties, we also have to level the business field by banning monopolies and oligopolies.”
If the Con-com’s proposal under its draft federal constitution is formally adopted, PCC and CHR will be added to the list of independent and fiscally autonomous constitutional commissions, which currently includes the Civil Service Commission, Commission on Elections and the Commission on Audit.
Being fiscally autonomous means their appropriations shall not be reduced by the legislature below the amount appropriated in the previous years, and after approval shall be automatically and regularly released.
To recall, the House of Representatives initially approved on second reading a P1,000 budget for the CHR, among other agencies in September last year. In the same month, the House also restored the budgets of three agencies, including the Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, after drawing flak.
Puno said the commissioners may only be removed by impeachment and shall have a fixed term of seven years without reappointment. Their salary and retirement benefits cannot also be reduced.
Single competition authority
The committee also decided on Saturday that there should only be one competition policy and one competition authority at the federal level.
Arthur N. Aguilar, chairman of Subcommittee on Economic Reforms, said in an earlier interview that this will enable the federal government to check and prevent economic domination in any of the proposed federated regions and that the federated region cannot formulate their own competition policy or create their competition authority.
Among the “enormous” powers of the federal competition authority include the conduct of motu proprio investigations involving violation of competition laws; review of mergers and acquisitions that prevent or restrict competition in the market or allow players to abuse their dominant market position; issue subpoena duces tecum; the power to cite for contempt; the power to inspect business premises; impose sanctions like the divestiture order or disbursement of excess profits and to impose fines and penalties.
PCC Chairman Arsenio M. Balisacan told the BusinesssMirror in a message that they welcomed the Con-com proposal.
“With this move the PCC’s existence and mandate will be guaranteed by no less than the fundamental law. If we are to be fully effective in leveling the economic playing field, the PCC has to be insulated from political pressure, owing accountability only to the Constitution and the public,” Balisacan said.
CHR mandate
Meanwhile, the Con-com has also redefined the coverage of rights that the CHR is mandated to protect and expanded its powers.
Aside from watching out for violations of rights guaranteed by the Constitution, the CHR’s mandate will now also include guarding against violations of rights covered by international human rights covenant and treatises to which the Philippines is signatory.
“We also empowered the Commission on Human Rights to go after all violators of human rights which shall include not only state actors but also nonstate actors. Heretofore, the seeming mandate of the commission is only to go after state actors like the police and the military that violate human rights and this has earned some vitriolic criticisms,” Puno said. “We shall end that limitation of power. After all, the reality is a great number of violator of human rights come also from non-state actors.”
The Con-com has also given CHR the power to grant immunity and to establish a witness protection program for persons whose testimony is necessary to determine the truth in any investigation conducted by it.
Puno noted that the witness protection program of the Department of Justice is “ineffective” since the perceived violator of human rights is the government itself.
“Hence, to take care of this abnormal situation, it is necessary that a different witness protection program be established and we give it to the Commission on Human Rights to create its own witness protection program,” he said.
Puno said they also gave the CHR visitorial powers over jails, prisons and analogous detention facilities, noting that massive violations of human rights are found in the country’s jails.
Aside from violations of civil and political rights of the people, the CHR is also now empowered to investigate violations of socioeconomic rights and environmental rights.
“This means that the commission can now investigate those who trample on our people’s right to health, our people’s right to clean air, right to clean water, right to healthy environment,” he said.
Last year President Duterte “joked” about the abolition of the CHR as he defended the police and soldiers amid allegations of human- rights violations in the country.
Human-rights groups have also criticized the Duterte administration’s war on drugs, which allegedly led to thousands of extrajudicial killings. The administration has since denied that the summary killings were state-sponsored.
The committee is already 100-percent done with its proposed draft federal constitution, which is now subjected to final review for each provision. The final en banc vote for the entire draft was moved from June 28 to June 30.
The Con-com is targeting to submit its draft to the President on or before July 9, weeks before the Chief Executive’s State of the Nation Address on July 23.