Dear Speaker Nograles,

We are members of the Right to Know. Right Now! Campaign, a network of organizations, coalitions and individuals from various sectors.  We count among our ranks public-interest groups, environmental protection advocates, independent media groups, print and broadcast journalists, farmers organizations and support groups, women’s organizations, private and public sector labor unions, migrant workers, businessmen, lawyers, academic institutions, student and youth organizations, and concerned individuals. We come together to make the urgent call for the passage of the Freedom of Information Act.

The passage of the Freedom of Information Act is long overdue. It is a promise to the Filipino people that the Constitution assured in 1987, or 23 years ago, yet. Our people need and truly deserve this law. It is as well a demand of the times, a vote for good governance, democracy, and the people’s right to know.

We thus welcomed it as a major development when you included the Freedom of Information Act in the priority list of proposed legislation on political and governance reform, in your “Sustaining the Growth, Spreading the Benefits” legislative agenda.

We consistently lauded the House of Representatives under your leadership for taking the measure forward through the arduous legislative process. On 12 May 2008, even before the end of the first regular session, your House passed on third reading House Bill 3732, or the Freedom of Information Act. At the resumption of session last 18 January this year, we met you together with House Committee on Public Information Chairman Bienvenido Abante, Jr., Vice Chairman Eduardo Zialcita, and House Committee TWG Chairman Lorenzo “Erin” Tañada III, appealing for the immediate constitution of the House Panel to the Bicameral Conference Committee. You did not frustrate us by forming the House Panel on the same day. The panel promptly met its Senate counterpart on 20 January for the reconciliation of the disagreeing provisions and the approval of the Bicameral Conference Report.

Read the full letter.

LAST February 2 and 3, the last two days before Congress adjourned for the elections, the House of Representatives failed to take up the ratification of the Bicameral Conference Committee Report on the Freedom of Information Act.
 
The members of the House of Speaker Prospero Nograles were caught up in conflicts largely partisan and personal, that they could not bother with important and urgent public-interest legislation. Repeatedly, the rival camps questioned the presence of a quorum on both days.

In the end, the ratification of the Freedom of Information Act fell by the wayside, collateral casualty to the little wars of the honorable members of the House.
 
We had hoped to see that, as promised in his press statements earlier, Speaker Nograles would submit the FOI for ratification by the House before the members adjourn to campaign for the elections. We had hoped to see proof that Speaker Nograles could demonstrate leadership and get his House in order.

Motives and Giving Norms Behind Remittances:
The Case of Filipino Overseas Workers and their Recipient Households

The literature has focused on motives to explain remittance behavior. But as non‐anonymous transfers, remittances are apt to be influenced by giving norms as well. We formulate an empirical specification that takes account of remittance motives involving worker‐household pairs. We find that altruism dominates the exchange motive among overseas workers who are likely to be the primary breadwinners of their recipient households. We also find that, in the subsample in which overseas workers are likely to be secondary breadwinners, (a) household labor income is an endogenous explanatory variable and (b) the error covariance of the household income and remittance selection equations is positive. A possible reason for (a) is that
secondary breadwinners use household income as an imperfect signal of opportunity cost or to detect unobserved effort, i.e., moral hazard, in generating income. As for (b), we surmise that it indicates the presence of incentive‐compatible mechanisms against moral hazard. On giving norms, we find that, in samples that include overseas workers who are secondary breadwinners, remittance amounts are afflicted with negative selectivity. We present evidence that this is consistent with Filipino giving practices, in which everyone gives but in modest amounts.