Finally, Marawi compensation bill gets final reading approval in the Senate

Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa on Monday, Jan. 31 lauded the passage of Senate Bill (SB) 2420, or The Marawi Compensation Bill, on third and final reading in today’s Senate hybrid plenary session.

Dela Rosa, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Marawi City Rehabilitation, said that it is only a matter of time before President Duterte signs the measure into law.

He thanked principal sponsor Senator Juan Edgardo ‘’Sonny’’ M. Angara, chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, for shepherding SB 2420.

“We will not stop until Marawi completely returns to its former glory. This huge success in the approval of this long-awaited legislation is an expression that this Congress is fervent in helping our ‘kababayans’ to rebuild, to restart, and to stand again after the devastation of the terrorist attack,’’ he said.

‘’I will continue to proudly stand for our kababayans in Marawi and the rest of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region,” he added.

Adding his voice to the passage of the measure, Senate President Ralph G. Recto said ‘’the bill must be fully and faithfully funded as it would hasten the healing of a wounded land and a hurting people.’’

‘’It is the missing link in making Marawi better than it was before. In fact, the idea this bill espouses should have been the cornerstone of Marawi’s rehabilitation, and not a mere afterthought. This should have been the foundation, not the capstone,’’he pointed out.

‘’If this had been done earlier, Marawi would have risen from the ashes faster,’’ he added.

Recto said compensating owners of destroyed properties is not only a matter of justice, it also injects the vital economic stimuli that would accelerate recovery.

‘’With this bill, work on post-conflict restoration runs on two tracks—private and public—instead of the latter pretending that it can do it alone,’’ he added.

Recto emphasized that in whatever calamity which has visited this blighted land, sweat equity of the victims has time and again been proven as a durable construction material.

He said that the delay in the passage of this bill is no fault of ours.

‘’On bills of this magnitude and sticker price, the operative rule is Executive proposes, Congress disposes. The latter cannot simply act on what has not been advocated,’’ he pointed out.

‘’But it is wrong to attribute the holdup to endemic bureaucratic inertia alone. For one, there is the COVID pandemic, a threat so existential that it must be first attended to,’’ he said.

The other is that the Marawi compensation is an extremely nuanced project with historical, legal, cultural complexities like an intricately designed ‘’malong.’’

‘’I am glad, Mr. President, that this bill reconciles all of these in one textured tapestry of a law that is at the same time grand and granular.