SENATE President Juan Miguel Zubiri yesterday stood firm the approved Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) bill was not tampered with as alleged by some senators since “we just reflected the true intention of the provisions as reflected in the transcript of records.”
Zubiri made the clarification amid the position that by several senators that a proposed measure which has been passed on third and final reading cannot be touched anymore, more so by unelected senators.
“Unang una (First of all), there’s no such thing as tampering. There was never a plan to tamper, there was no sinister move to tamper the measure. We just want to put on record that we just reflected the true intention of the provisions, as reflected on the transcript of records,” Zubiri said during the Kapihan sa Senado media forum.
Zubiri said the clerical and typographical errors on the MIF bill, which was approved on third and final reading on the wee hours of the morning of May 31, was expected because Senate staff members were already tired, having worked all day and rendering overtime work until the measure was finally approved by the senators.
He noted that after the measure was approved by the Senate at around 2:30 a.m. of May 31, their counterparts from the House of Representatives asked for a meeting with the senators, which was then scheduled at 11 a.m. also of May 31.
“That was not an official bicam meeting. That was only a meeting of members of the Senate and members of the House. We just discussed provisions there, about the provisions. And in that discussion, they said they will adopt the Senate version,” he explained.
He said what was used as a working version of the measure during the meeting was only a “draft” of the approved MIF bill.
He added it was only after a review of the final bill that it was discovered that it had two sections with different prescription periods.
“Dahil siguro umagang umaga na, that’s the last day of work, it was an honest oversight of our Secretariat (Since it was already daytime, and it was the last day of work [before sine die adjournment], it was an honest oversight of our Secretariat),” Zubiri said.
The Senate leader said that when the inconsistencies were identified, Sen. Mark Villar, who is the chairperson of the Committee on Banks which sponsored the measure, wrote a letter to the leadership for the proper correction to be made on Sections 50 and 51. Villar supposedly said the two sections should just be merged into one section.
Zubiri also said the MIF bill had no printed copy yet at the time it was approved, which is required of measures passed on final reading, because it was approved on second and third reading on the same day since it was certified as urgent by President Marcos Jr.
“The certification does away with two things: the requirement to have three readings on separate days, and to have a printed third reading copy before approval,” he said.
“There was no printed copy that was on its final form when we voted to approve the Maharlika version because of the lateness of the hour,” he added.
He said bills passed on second and third and final reading goes to the Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office (LBRMO) for review to find out if there are typographical errors.
Zubiri said corrections after the third and final approval of the MIF bill were still legal and acceptable since this was not yet an “enrolled bill.”
An enrolled bill is a measure which has already been signed by the Senate president and the House Speaker.
He said this is reason why each time a measure is passed or amendments are accepted during plenary discussions, the presiding officer always says that the measure was approved “subject to style,” which means that it can still be reworded in the right way according to legal parlance.
He said all Senate presidents have been declaring passed bills or accepted amendments as “subject to style” which gives the Secretariat the “power to look or adjust the commas, periods, wordings.”
To prove his point, Zubiri cited the instance when Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel III introduced amendments to the AFP Professionalism Act days after it was passed on third reading last March 6 and approved by the bicameral committee on March 21.
“Approved na sa (it has been approved in the) bicameral conference committee meeting. That morning, Sen. Koko continued to give amendments, tapos na po sa (even if it was already finished in the) bicam report. Tapos na po (It was done). We approved it na. With due respect to my minority floor leader, on March 22 he continued to further give amendments. Ratified in the afternoon of March 22. But even after that, they continued to do perfecting amendments,” he said.
Zubiri also cited other similar instance, such as the approval of the measure seeking amendments to the Foreign Investments Act, the Vape Bill, the Anti-Terrorism law, and the Bayanihan law.
“This process is not tantamount to falsification. This is the usual legislative process we go through. We are only reflecting the true essence of what was discussed during the plenary. Until it is signed by me, under an enrolled copy, it can still be corrected subject to style,” Zubiri said.
Zubiri said the MIF bill which he signed while he was on a working visit to the United States has already been transmitted to the House last Tuesday and Speaker Martin Romualdez is expected to sign it by Monday next week.
‘NOT USUAL’
Pimentel, in a message to reporters, said: “What they did with Maharlika is not usual.”
“It is sneaky tampering. They changed the wording, amounting to changing the substance. Behind closed doors. In Maharlika, there was no bicam. The bicam process is actually the last opportunity to amend the differing versions of the House and the Senate,” Pimentel said.
He said that the examples of amendments given by Zubiri all underwent bicameral discussions.
“Hence there were amendments because that’s the purpose of the bicam — to ‘harmonize’ differing versions. How do you harmonize? You change some parts of the measure with participation and agreement of the two panels. The bicam conference submits a signed report and gets this ratified by the plenary of each House,” he added.
He said that since the MIF bill did not go through bicameral discussions, there was no chance to make changes in the Senate version approved on third and final reading.
“We should give importance to the word ‘final’. Compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. We should not allow the muddling of the issue,” Pimentel said.
He said it was clear that the House officially adopted the Senate version, therefore, it should have an idea “what they were adopting.”
“If the Senate then edits the Senate version, then how sure are we that the edited version is or was the one adopted by the House when the adoption came before the editing? This is in addition to the issue of the power of the ‘e ditors’ to do what they did after the Senate has adjourned its session sine die,” he said.
Zubiri refused to engage Pimentel in a debate since the latter was a Bar exams topnotcher while he is just a “parang abogado (just like a lawyer).”
Zubiri said he is relying on his years of experience in the Senate, being a former majority leader in the past Congresses which he said prepared him for such an issue.
“There is jurisprudence on internal processes of Congress. For example, Morales vs. Zubino and the Civil Service Commission. Very clear that… declined to rule on matters involving the internal processes of Congress. And it says ‘We cannot go behind the enrolled act to discover what really happened. This is a portion of a direct quote from this Supreme Court decision,” he said.
“This is very simple styling correction. It was basically our staff that got confused. It was an honest to goodness oversight by our staff that they put two provisions, one 10 years, one 20 years,” he insisted.
