The House of Representatives acted on two controversial proposed laws this week, after three weeks of not being able to muster a quorum. Guess which bill – the “substitute” measure on reproductive health and the promised Freedom of Information law – is going to be approved in the remaining 10 or so session days of the chamber.

Here are the possibilities: the House passes both measures, it passes either one, or passes neither. Given the lack of time, my own bet would be on the last: neither measure would be approved.

Then, after Congress resumes its sessions next year, there will no longer be any time to pass either bill either, because all our congressmen will be so busy campaigning for themselves or the family members who will replace them. I could be wrong, of course; but I've got practically the entire history of Congress backing me up.

Coming to think of it, if the House were a regular private company, the absenteeism of its members that has resulted in not getting any plenary work done would have caused the mass firing of its members. The lack of a quorum, after all, only means that there are not enough House members present so the chamber cannot act on anything in a plenary (or full) session.

Of course, nobody ever attempted to impose private-sector – or even civil service – rules on such a simple matter as getting congressmen to attend sessions. In the same manner, no one – especially not any congressman – has proposed that House members shorten their vacation breaks, like the one which will allow them to adjourn “sine die” even before the middle of December.

But let's not kid ourselves here: the House often does not have a quorum not only because our lawmakers are habitually lazy, which, for the most part, they probably are. The lack of a quorum is also a time-honored way of preventing the passage of legislation, like the RH bill that is causing so much division amongst Filipinos.

It has gotten so bad that Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. has had to make a personal appeal to congressmen to show up during last Monday's session so that they may get some plenary work done. Fully 174 congressmen (grudgingly, it can be imagined) turned up last Monday and approved the substitute RH measure.

Meanwhile, the House committee on public information also approved the proposed FOI measure, which doesn't need a plenary session to get it to the whole chamber for consideration. In the end, the committee of Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, which has been rightly accused of sitting on the bill despite the repeated promise to approve it made by President Noynoy Aquino, gave its go-ahead to the measure. 

But it was close.

* * *

Of course, the House has been known to act quickly and decisively, especially when a proposed measure or legislative action – like the impeachment of former Chief Justice Renato Corona – has the unequivocal backing of Malacanang Palace. The palace's support comes in the form of the largesse of pork that makes congressmen attend sessions like they're supposed to, something that former lawmaker and Budget Secretary Florencio Abad knows only too well.

The House's dilly-dallying on both RH and FOI, after all, has been blamed by many congressmen on the fact that it has not gotten “clear signals” from Malacanang on the urgency of both measures. Shorn of congressional euphemism-making, those signals are clearly those emitted by Butch Abad.

And so, ultimately, the fate of both measures in the House plenary will largely depend on the push from Malacanang, in the unmistakeable promise of pork and its timely delivery by Abad. It's really that simple.

(The Senate is not so enamored with the palace's lard that Abad so liberally – pun intended – applies to the House. But that certainly doesn't mean that our senators are not subject to other enticements, of course; see the aforementioned conviction of Corona, for more details.)

Is this any way for a House whose members are elected by the people and who are supposed to protect their interest to act? Of course not – but perhaps before we get into the subject of the way our congressmen vote, with both eyes on the palace's purse, we should first ask why they can't even come to work when they should, to begin with.

It would be unfair to say that all members of the House are just waiting on the palace to give them money before they even show up at the office. But the exceptions are so few (the porkless-yet-somehow-surviving Zambales Rep. Mitos Magsaysay is one of them) that they merely prove the rule.

It's truly sad, the way our congressmen will not work unless their pork is assured. But that's the way the House has always been operating; and this administration (which is supposed to be reformist) cravenly uses the no-vote, no-pork policy as if that is an integral part of the policy of “daang matuwid.”

So, if you really want to know if either (or both) the RH and FOI bills will pass in the House, it's useless to look to the Batasan. Everyone there, after all, is just waiting to see what Aquino and his errand boy Abad will do.*