SENATORS yesterday brushed off the challenge of House majority leader Manuel Jose Dalipe of Zamboanga City for them to “come out in the open” and declare their position on ongoing moves to amend the 1987 Constitution.
Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara, chairperson of the sub-committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes which is spearheading discussions on proposed Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) No. 6, said senators cannot and should not be rushed to already decide on the proposed amendments since they have just started their deliberations on the matter.
RBH No. 6 enjoins lawmakers from the Senate and the House of Representatives to introduce amendments to only three economic provisions of the Charter. Deliberations on the measure started last Monday.
Angara said senators need time to listen to and consider the sentiments of various stakeholders before they arrive at a decision.
“Paano maglalatag ng posisyon ang mga senador eh kakaumpisa lang ng hearings kung saan papakinggan ang mga eksperto? Hindi ba ganoon ang pagbalangkas ng batas?
Makinig muna tapos magde-debate, tapos boboto. Mas lalo na kapag Saligang Batas ang pinag-uusapan, hindi basta-basta magde-desisyon ang mga senador sa tingin ko. Mag-iisip at makikinig muna ‘yan. Sana ganon din sa HOR (How can senators already come out with our positions when we have just started with the hearings where we will still listen to the experts? Isn’t that how laws are crafted? We all listen first, debate, then vote on it.
Especially when it involves the Constitution, we just don’t decide, we listen and think. I hope the HOR [House of Representatives] also does that),” Angara said in a Viber message to the media.
Senate majority leader Joel Villanueva’s scoffed at Dalipe’s dare: “Who is he?” he asked.
Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel III said congressmen should not be over-eager on the Cha-cha issue, adding senators will make public their stance “at the proper time.”
“At this stage we are listening to experts and other resource persons. We should be allowed to keep an open mind. Otherwise, what is then the point of all these consultations if we already made up our minds at this time?” he said.
He added it is “pointless” to disclose anything in public as senators need to do so “in a formal way.”
Sen. Christopher Go said the Senate should not be obliged to disclose their stand on Cha-cha at the time. “Respetuhin niyo naman ang senador kung ano ang magiging posisyon niya. Kakaumpisa pa lang tapos tatanungin mo ‘are you in favor or not?’ Magiging bias ang deliberation kapag sinabi mo na (Please respect the senators with whatever their positions may be. We have just started and you’re already asking us if we are in favor or not? The deliberations will be biased if happens),” Go said in a chance interview.
Go said his overall position is that if the Constitution will be amended, it must be for the good of the people and not for the interest of any politician.
He added he is not in favor of rushing constitutional amendments, much less by way of a people’s initiative (PI) which, he said, “everyone knows is not a real PI.”.
Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri shrugged off Dalipe’s challenge and the statement of Rep. Ace Barbers for the Senate to approve RBH No. 6 before Congress takes a Lenten break on March 22.
“Trabaho muna kami (Let us work first),” was his brief reply to reporters.
OFFENSIVE
House leaders took offense at Villanueva’s reaction questioning who Dalipe is, saying the senator, a former party-list representative himself, has no right to belittle congressmen.
“Opinyon ni ano? Sino nga ulit ‘yun? Sino ‘yun? (Whose opinion was that? Who’s that again? Who’s that?” Deputy Speaker David Suarez hit back at Villanueva in a press conference.
“I would like to remind the good Majority Leader of the Senate, na wala naman tayong name-calling at pang-mamaliit (don’t resort to name-calling and insults). What is better for us is to move on with the discussion and hasten the passage of RBH 6,” Suarez said.
Suarez said Villanueva hurt a lot of House members when he belittled them last week when he said senators cannot be compared to party-list lawmakers or district representatives since House members receive way less votes than senators who have a national constituency.
“Marami na ngang nasaktan dun sa mga sinabi mo nung nakaraang linggo, daragdagan mo pa (A lot of people were already hurt by what you said last week and you’re adding more it),” he added.
Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, chair of the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs, reminded senators of the need to observe inter-parliamentary courtesy between the House and the Senate.
“This is where (inter-parliamentary) courtesy should come in. There must be some respect in the opinion of any member. Huwag nating umpisahan ng ganyan kasi hindi magandang pangitain ‘yun ika nga (Let’s not start like that because that could be a bad sign, so to speak).” he said. “If the (House) Majority Leader has posed a challenge to them (senators), it is because he is just thinking the proposal is an urgent proposal and it should be addressed, if possible, as soon as possible. Huwag na nating i-delay (Let’s not delay it).”
2025 PLEBISCITE?
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday thumbed down the proposal of Angara to hold the Cha-cha plebiscite anytime next year, whether synchronized with the May 2025 national and local elections or not.
In a television interview, Comelec chairman George Garcia said they are opposed to the idea of having a plebiscite running smack with the their preparations for the May 2025 midterm elections to be followed by the December 2025 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE).
“To be blunt, our preparation is at the peak by October or even November of this year. Surely, by January next year, we will be focusing on 2025 elections… we cannot hold such a plebiscite in 2025,” said Garcia.
“So why not squeeze in between May and December? We cannot do that. You need one year to prepare for an election. Try to imagine 5 months (before BSKE),” he added.
The poll chief also noted that no less than the Supreme Court, in a previous ruling, underscored the need to separate proposals to amend the Charter from the holding of elections because voters need to have undivided attention when voting for both electoral exercises.
“The SC said that you cannot include a plebiscite for the amendment of the Constitution and a regular election. The people must have a clear mind. They cannot be simultaneously thinking which leaders to elect and if they want to amend the Constitution,” he recalled.
“If it is amendment, focus on the amendment. If it is election, focus on the elections. This is simply because you are not amending a simple law. You are amending the Constitution, the very heart of our democratic processes,” said Garcia.
Angara earlier this week said the Cha-cha plebiscite can be aligned with the 2025 midterm elections so the government can save “billions of pesos” that will be spent if the voting will be done separately.
“Ang goal ko kasi, although the Constitution also sets the timeline, you must set the plebiscite 60 to 90 days after it passed by Congress. We have to reconcile that timeline of having the plebiscite along with the 2025 elections kasi magastos ang plebiscite (because plebiscite entails a lot of expenses),” he said on Wednesday.
Angara said that by aligning the plebiscite with the 2025 midterm elections, there will be a more efficient and cost-effective approach to implementing Charter amendments.
PI ENABLING LAW
Amid the continued bickering of lawmakers from the two houses of Congress, which was triggered by the controversial PI signature campaign to change the Charter, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman yesterday said he has filed a bill seeking to provide the enabling law that would operationalize the PI as a mode to introduce constitutional amendments.
Lagman, a leader of the opposition, filed House Bill No. 9868 on Monday entitled the “Enabling Law on People’s Initiative to Propose Amendments to the Constitution.”
Lagman said Republic Act No. 6735, or the “Initiative and Referendum Act,” does not qualify as an enabling law for the exercise of such right.
With HBN 9868 already filed, Lagman said proponents of Cha-cha via the PI mode should now stop their “misadventure,” pointing out that the process cannot yet proceed as there is no law to implement it.
Lagman said his bill will introduce the “enabling and compliant law so that our people can validly and properly exercise their right of initiative to propose amendments to the Constitution.”
In his bill, Lagman explained that on March 19, 1997, or almost 27 years ago, the Supreme Court “categorically and unanimously” held in Santiago vs. Commission on Elections (G.R. No. 127325) that RA 6735 “is not a sufficient, adequate, compliant, and enabling law to implement the exercise of people’s initiative to directly propose constitutional amendments.”
Lagman said the SC underscored that “the right of the people to directly propose amendments to the Constitution through the system of initiative would remain entombed in the cold niche of the Constitution until Congress provides for its implementation.”
The High Court further ruled that the “Comelec should be permanently enjoined from entertaining or taking cognizance of any petition for initiative on amendments to the Constitution until a sufficient law shall have been validly enacted to provide for the implementation of the system.”
Lagman said the Santiago ruling was not abandoned in Lambino vs. Comelec (G.R. NO. 174153) where the SC denied the petition on another principal issue – that the PI cannot revise the Constitution like transforming the form of government from presidential-bicameral to parliamentary-unicameral.
Former Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Alfredo Garbin Jr., who chaired the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments in the 18th Congress, said Lagman’s assertion is “clearly false” because the SC, in the case Lambino vs Comelec, supposedly upheld the existence of an enabling law on Article XVII, Section 2, or the constitutional right of the people to amend the Constitution via a people’s initiative.
Garbin said 10 justices said that RA 6735 “is sufficient and adequate as an enabling law to amend the Constitution through a people’s initiative.”
He said then Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban and Associate Justices Consuelo Ynares-Santiago and Adolfo S. Azcuna supposedly joined their dissenting colleagues – Senior Associate Justice Reynato S. Puno, and Justices Leonardo A. Quisumbing, Renato C. Corona, Dante O. Tinga, Minita V. Chico-Nazario, Cancio C. Garcia, and Presbitero J. Velasco, Jr. – in ruling that RA 6735 suffices as an enabling law to implement the constitutional provision on PI. — With Wendell Vigilia and Gerard Naval
