JDV: Cha-cha now inevitable

Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. told his House colleagues and the nation yesterday that amending the 1987 Constitution has now become urgent and could no longer be avoided.

Cha-cha (Charter change), "which in the past was debatable, is now inevitable," De Venecia said in a speech outlining his chamber’s priorities and marking the start of the Second Regular Session of the 12th Congress.

This is the "strong sentiment" that has emerged in the House and in First Political Parties Conference that he and the ruling Lakas convened in May, he said.

"Several resolutions on this effect are now pending in the House. They await our urgent and crucial decision, which we can no longer put off," De Venecia added.

He stressed that the Senate paralysis, which he claimed exposed the weakness of a two-chamber legislature, has made Cha-cha more urgent.

The other House priorities, as identified by De Venecia, include measures that would help the administration solve the problem of a soaring budget deficit, encourage Filipinos to save money, reform the electoral process, reforest logged over areas, bring down the cost of electricity, and stimulate economic growth.

Reacting to the Speaker’s strong pitch for Cha-cha, Minority Leader Carlos Padilla (LDP, Nueva Vizcaya) said although he agrees in principle with Cha-cha proponents that some constitutional provisions have to be revisited, "it should not be our focus in this session."

"We should attend to the gaping budget deficit, joblessness, homelessness, criminality, smuggling, peace and order, and the other problems the nation is facing. Cha-cha can wait," he said.

De Venecia conceded that one of the most urgent tasks that Congress has to do is controlling the budget deficit.

"We are still far from year-end, but it (deficit) already stands at P107 billion, huge enough to threaten cuts in public spending for peace and order, basic education, public health, and infrastructure," he said.

He said the tax effort, already one of the poorest in Southeast Asia, has further fallen, resulting in a collection shortfall of P35 billion as of last May.

He proposed several measures to tackle the deficit problem, including converting the Bureau of Internal Revenue into a corporation, scrapping the value added tax and restoring the old sales tax, and indexing specific taxes on tobacco and alcohol products on inflation.