Malacañang said Tuesday the fate of a fresh bill seeking to grant ABS-CBN Corp a new broadcast franchise was "a sole constitutional prerogative of Congress"—almost half a year after a House panel rejected the network's license application.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Monday filed the bill that sought a 25-year license for the country's erstwhile largest broadcaster, saying "TV stations have been replacing their news programs with animes."
Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said his guess was that the bill "will pass only with Palace’s support."
"I beg to differ," Duterte's spokesman Harry Roque said of Recto's comment.
"That is a sole constitutional prerogative of Congress which must originate from the House of Representatives," he told reporters in an online briefing.
Sotto had said "ABS-CBN's wide reach to Filipinos, alongside with the undeniable advantages of broadcast media relative to mass communication, definitely call for the immediate renewal of the network's franchise."
But in the House, a party-list lawmaker said bills that had been filed on the renewal of franchise to operate of ABS-CBN must be withdrawn first before a new one is filed and allow the reopening of its deliberations on the matter.
Anakalusugan Rep. Michael Defensor made the statement after Sotto filed Senate Bill 7966 that calls for the renewal of media giant ABS-CBN Corporation’s franchise which was rejected by the House of Representatives in July last year.
Sen. Grace Poe said the issue would be given top priority as soon as it was referred to the Committee on Public Service which she chairs.
However, since the Constitution requires that bills of such nature originate from the House, she noted that it would most likely be referred to the Rules Committee until the House grants the franchise.
“My support for a free and fair media in the name of public service remains. I will make sure that the Committee acts on it in due course,” added the chair of the Senate committee on public services.
Defensor, vice chair of the House Committee on Legislative Franchise, said that when the committee denied the franchise application of ABS-CBN back in July last year, the bills proposing it were simply "laid on the table" or set aside.
"This means that these measures still exist and have not been junked altogether," Defensor said, referring to the 12 bills filed at lower chamber that propose to extend the franchise of ABS-CBN for another 25 years.
"So can anyone else file? No, because there is already a bill," Defensor said.
According to Defensor, the authors of the ABS-CBN franchise renewal bill should have withdrawn authorship of the old bills and file a new one. "That should be the process," he said.
Sen. Nancy Binay said “we could have saved more lives if people were well-informed about the heavy rains and typhoons."
Sad to say, she noted that the government and other networks fell short in bridging the information gap.
"I share my colleagues' position in the Senate to support ABS-CBN's franchise renewal because the people at this time need the true and right news in the middle of a pandemic and vaccination," she said.
"More than the anime shows, we need a strong voice that can reach even the farthest household with news and information that matter," she insisted.
Sen. Joel Villanueva said he was co-authoring Sotto’s bill, adding “we all know that ABS-CBN deserves the renewal of its franchise given the service it has rendered to the Filipino people.”
Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara said he supported the bill. “But as you know, it’s all dependent on what the House will do since it is subject to the origination clause of the Constitution where certain types of bills including franchise bills must originate from the House.”
Sotto, in his proposed measure, cited a Social Weather Station Survey in December 2019 which was released September 2020, noting that ABS-CBN remains to be the top source of news in the country.
The survey said that 69 percent of Filipino adults or about 45 million individuals get their news through it while 19 percent of Filipinos rely on its radio for their news.
Batangas 6th District Rep. Vilma Santos-Recto said she would file a counterpart bill to bring back ABS-CBN to free television.
"We need to start rebuilding our economy," Santos-Recto said in a statement. "Through this bill, we will be creating jobs (so many people do not have jobs today) and help promote healthy competition among the networks."
Duterte in December 2019 said he would see to it that ABS-CBN was "out" and from early in his term had accused it of failing to air his 2016 election ads. Despite this, his aides had sought to distance the
President from the rejection of ABS-CBN's franchise application.
ABS-CBN, owned by the Lopez family, had broadcast continuously since 1953 except between 1972 and 1986 when it was sequestered by the government of then President Ferdinand Marcos, who declared martial law by virtue of the powers vested in him by the 1935 Constitution.
In May last year, the network was forced to halt its TV and radio broadcast operations on orders of the National Telecommunications Commission following the expiration of its previous license.
Two months later, the House panel voted to deny its new franchise application despite government regulators and other officials clearing ABS-CBN of alleged tax fraud and violations of foreign ownership restrictions in mass media, among other legal issues.
In the months since losing its free-to-air permit, ABS-CBN has kept showing many of its popular news and entertainment programs on cable TV and online.
But much of the advertising revenue it used to rake in has been wiped out, forcing the broadcaster to retrench thousands of its workers.
Defensor said the House in plenary session had yet to vote on the report submitted by the franchise committee on the denial of the ABS-CBN franchise bid.
He said nobody could just move to have the deliberations on the matter reopened without having observed the House rules.
He added the House Committee on Rules would "definitely oppose it" to protect the work of the franchise committee.
"What is the easiest way to bring back the discussion at the committee level? The original authors of the [ABS-CBN] franchise renewal bill should all withdraw their authorship and a new franchise law should be filed," Defensor said.
In July, the House legislative franchises committee under the Cayetano leadership rejected the franchise application of ABS-CBN Corp. by adopting a resolution denying the franchise application of ABS-CBN to construct, install, establish, operate and maintain radio and broadcasting stations in the Philippines.
The broadcast giant was shuttered after lawmakers voted 70-11 to reject bills that would have given the radio and TV network a new 25-year franchise. There were one abstention and two recusals.
The lawmakers—many of them allies of President Duterte—took pains to emphasize that their decision had nothing to do with press freedom, even though Duterte had threatened as early as 2018 to block the renewal of ABS-CBN’s license to operate.
ABS-CBN was ordered to stop operating on May 5 after its legislative franchise expired, even though there were several bills seeking its renewal pending in the House of Representatives.