by RHEE Fer HORTALEZA

BAGUIO CITY - More than 200 local government legislators from various towns and cities in Pangasinan trooped to the Star Mountain Hotel on Quezon Hill here last week to attend a seminar-workshop that sought to further improve their effectiveness and efficiency as members of legislature councils in their respective territories.

The seminar-workshop, especially designed for lawmakers in the Pangasina chapter of the Philippine Councilors League (PCL), was pursued under the theme: ‘Strengthening the Capacity of Sanggunian Quasi-Judicial Functions, Ethics and Parliamentary Skills’.

Sangguniang Panlalawigan Member Danilo C. Uy, PCL chapter president and a Sangguniang Bayan member in Binalonan town, disclosed that the seminar-worskshop tends to further orient local legislators of their duties and funcitons, especially as regards legal and parliamentary matters, so as to further make them effective as lawmakers in their Sanggunian bodies.

This was echoed by Vice Governor Oscar B. Lambino, who was invited as guest speaker during the fellowship night on the second day of the three-day affair. Lambino said that there is indeed a ‘great need to inform legislators of their funciotns, hone them further in the art of legislation and supplement or improve their knowledge of parliamentary skills so that they will not encounter legal difficulties in pursuing their legislative functions.”

Lambino said he felt happy at what he perceived as the effective acceptance or absorption by the local lawmakers of the important or vital matters learned during the seminar-workshop, in the process congratulating Uy for such a useful and necessary undertaking.

“I wish that you will go back home and successfully bring with you the inputs you learned from the three-day affair and, in the process, become more learned and effective legislators!” he averred.

The PCL members were treated to comprehensive lectures on topics about quasi-judicial bodies, quasi-judicial funcitons, administrative cases investigation procedures, internal rules of procedures, government ethics and parliamentary rules.

Discussing these topics were Atty. Armie D. Bravo, former assistant division chief of the DILG’s Trial and Investigation Legal Service and currently a corporate lawyer of the RSBS of the Armed Forces of the Philippines; Atty. Romeo Benitez, assistant chief of the DILG’s Trial and Investigation Legal Service in Manila; and Pangasinan’ Sangguniang Panlalawigan Member John Agerico B. Rosario, who tackled the important aspects of preparing Sanggunian committee reports.

Sangguniang Bayan or Sangguniang Panlungsod members from almost 30 towns and cities in Pangasinan, attended the activity, with some Sanggunians also sending their vice mayors.

Both Lambino and Uy pointed out that knowledgeable legislators help build strong cities or municipalities as such lawbreakers would know what is best or what is most beneficial to the progress of their communities.