PHILIPPINE NEWS SERVICE — Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago has maintained her no. 1 rank in the Senate in terms of the number of bills and resolutions filed since the l4th Congress convened about a year ago.
Santiago has introduced a total of 624 measures—consisting of 526 bills and 98 resolutions, as shown by the records of the indexing and monitoring section of the legislative bills and index service of the Senate.
Second placer is Senator Jinggoy Estrada, who has authored 502 measure—458 bills and 44 resolutions.
Senate President Manuel Villar has the third highest number of measures proposed, broken down into 306 bills and 74 resolutions.
Records indicated that there was not a single week when Santiago did not submit legislative proposals to the Senate secretariat. During the last week of session before Congress adjourned on June ll, she presented a number of bills and resolutions.
The bills included a proposal to establish an office on Internet safety and public awareness within the National Telecommunications Commission and the Climate Change Drinking Water Adaptation Research Act.
The resolutions included those calling for an inquiry into the repeated use of medical devices made from polyvinyl chloride plastic which could be detrimental to health and an inquiry on the illegal influx of Indian tourists to the country.
Ranked fourth on the list was Senator Loren Legarda who had 2l3 measures to her credit, including l37 bills and 76 resolutions. Legarda was second only to Santiago in the number of resolutions filed.
Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. occupied the fifth slot among the most productive filers of legislative measures with l58 in all— l33 bills and 23 resolutions.
The records revealed that Senator Antonio Trillanes IV was able to introduce l52 bills and resolutions despite his continued incarceration for a rebellion case. But this figure is much less than the claim of his office that he has authored 380 measures. This has put him in the sixth place of top bill filers.
Just last week, the Supreme Court denied Trillanes’ petition to be allowed to discharge his legislative duties such as attending the sessions and hearings of the Senate and presiding over the hearings of the committee on civil service and government reorganization of which he is the chairman.
Trillanes, a former navy lieutenant who led the failed 2003 Oakwood mutiny and the 2009 Manila Peninsula siege, is being detained at the headquarters of the Marine Brigade at Fort Bonifacio while the coup and other criminal charges against him are being heard by the Makati Regional Trial Court and a military tribunal of the Armed Forces.