Lawmakers are considering efforts to amend the country’s Constitution to ease restrictive provisions on economic ownership, a top congressional leader said on Monday.
“We want to lift the restrictive provisions vis a vis the economy,” House Speaker Martin Romualdez said in an economic briefing.
Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual expressed support to the proposal saying “this will make our country more competitive in attracting foreign investments – needed for creating high-quality jobs for our people.”
Romualdez said the amendments will allow lawmakers to “regulate” economic sectors that can be opened for foreign investors.
Romualdez said the amendments should be undertaken through a People’s Initiative because the two other modes provided for by the fundamental law of the land cause procedural issues, particularly on how the House and the Senate should vote on the amendments.
“We will highly recommend that we embark on a people-centered initiative to cure this impasse, so to speak, on how we vote. And I hope that we can undertake this as soon as possible so we could have some clarity on the procedures. We’d like to have that (procedural problem) resolved by and through a people’s initiative,” Romualdez told the Philippine Economic Forum in Iloilo.
Romualdez said top congressional leaders of the country’s political parties were to meet yesterday to discuss procedural issues that have hampered past efforts to amend the Philippines’ 1987 constitution.
Foreign business chambers have been urging Congress to lift current limits to foreign investment, including the so-called 60-40 rule, which caps foreign ownership of local firms at 40 percent.
Past efforts to rewrite the constitution have failed. Critics have said efforts to amend the constitution could also open doors for lawmakers to lift term limits for elected officials.
The House has long been pushing to amend the 36-year-old Charter’s economic provisions to attract more foreign investments.
Romualdez said that while the 1987 Constitution provided three modes for amending it, the Charter does not explicitly say if the House and the Senate should vote jointly or separately, an issue that can only be decided by the Supreme Court once the voting is done.
“I’m going to be sharing with you things that I’ve not shared with the public,” he said. “I will actually be pre-empting our all-party leaders’ caucus this afternoon and sharing it with you here in Iloilo. We are thinking of addressing the procedural gap or question as to how we amend the Constitution.”
The People’s Initiative mode was floated in 2018 by then Southern Leyte Rep. Roger Mercado, who was the chair of the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments.
Lawmakers have long been trying to exercise their constituent powers by treating Charter change resolutions like an ordinary bill but the plan never came to fruition because of the legal question on how the voting should be undertaken.
Another option the previous Congress explored under the Duterte administration was the expensive Constitutional Convention which involves electing delegates who would propose the amendments or even a revision of the Constitution. -Reuters, Wendell Vigilia and Irma Isip
