MANILA, July 23, 2013—Hours before President Benigno Aquino III delivered on Monday his fourth State of the Nation Address, an official of the Ang Kapatiran party criticized the administration for pushing legislation that is not beneficial or in many ways harmful to the economy. 
Norman Cabrera, secretary general of Ang Kapatiran party, in a forum dubbed “Tapatan sa Aristocrat” said, “There is good economics in good legislation and there is bad economics in bad legislation. The RH law is a bad legislation which brings about bad economics.”
Cabrera cited foreign lobby funding as one of the reason the government is bent of implementing the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) law known as Republic Act (RA) 10354 the constitutionality of which is currently being challenged at the Supreme Court.
“The only reason government is so aghast (sic) on this RH law is because of fund promises from other nations, particularly the United States of America. If we look closely these funds are backed by pharmaceutical companies. If we remove those funding will the government insist on it? No,” said Cabrera.
Cabrera added that most likely the RH law will be another source of corruption and is only a ‘masquerading’ policy to address poverty in the country by means of population control focused on the poor.
“They want to reduce the poverty rate by reducing the number of poor. That’s not right, the right way to address poverty in the country is by passing laws that will have good economic impact,” he said.
Cabrera further cited policies like investing on TESDA, Freedom of Information, and abolition of pork barrel that will have good economic impact. (Paul De Guzman)
