WITH the start of regular sessions in Congress yesterday, it is open season again for the revision of the Constitution in the next few days. Several things have happened during the month-long recess in the legislature, and it is time to review these occurrences.
First, Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said the anti-Charter Change group in the Senate now has at least eight votes. They were originally composed of Senators Koko Pimentel, Risa Hontiveros, Cynthia Villar, Imee Marcos and Francis Escudero. Several caucuses held by the senators led Zubiri to believe that three or four more senators were against moves to revise the Charter. “They have not spoken in public but they’ve been very vocal within, during our caucuses,” Zubiri noted.
Second, Sen. Robin Padilla, who chairs the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments, Revision of Codes and Laws, has filed Resolution of Both Houses No. 5 seeking to introduce political amendments to the Charter, specifically the lifting of the term limits of elected public officials. Padilla conducted a hearing on it last week.
In filing RBH No. 5, Padilla is fleshing out the previously wild idea floated by lawyer Larry Gardon, presidential adviser for Poverty Alleviation, who believes that lifting the term limits of local officials would result in billions of pesos of savings for the government since elections would no longer be held every six years. These savings can be funneled to poverty alleviation efforts, such as food production, housing, and health care.
‘Zubiri is looking into the option of getting guidance from the public through a new survey by the Social Weather Stations, following Pulse Asia’s poll in March that showed 88 percent of Filipinos are against Cha-cha.’
Zubiri said it is Padilla’s right to discuss RBH 5 in a public hearing, but doubts if RBH No. 5 would get the approval of the senators since it involves amendments to political provisions of the Constitution. The Senate president had complained that he has been having a hard time getting votes for Charter change involving exclusively economic provisions, how much more if the revision will include political provisions.
“Practicality-wise, I am finding it hard to get the needed votes for economic Cha-cha, how much more the proposed political provisions? I’m being practical about it…To be honest, we don’t have the 18 votes as of now for the economic provisions alone and then you will add the political provisions which are very unpopular among our countrymen. I doubt if we can even get, we can muster half the Senate to agree to political provisions. So, if that’s the case, it will be lost, of course, in a vote with the senators,” Zubiri said.
The Senate has 24 members, and they will need 18 votes to get Cha-cha going, as the members of the House of Representatives wanted them to do. The House of Representatives, which has been pressing the Senate to hasten its Charter change discussions, has approved RBH No. 7, its version of the Senate’s RBH No. 6.
The Senate subcommittee of the Committee on Constitutional Amendments headed by Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara is set to start anew its discussions on RBH No. 6, which seeks to revise three economic provisions of the Constitution. He has previously said that the proposed amendments would likely be submitted for plenary debates by October. The committee has three more public hearings scheduled in the provinces about this burning issue that is hotter than the prevailing heat index.
Senators Joseph Victor Ejercito and Nancy Binay mentioned in their past media interviews that they were against Cha-cha, and Senate majority leader Joel Villanueva said he was not convinced of amending the Constitution because foreign direct investments can enter the country once the ease of doing business is strictly implemented. These developments indicate that the chances of Cha-cha being approved in the Senate have become slim.
Zubiri is looking into the option of getting guidance from the public through a new survey by the Social Weather Stations, following Pulse Asia’s poll in March that showed 88 percent of Filipinos are against Cha-cha. These are credible polling organizations, but the final say still lies with the senators, now that the representatives have solidified their position.
