Drilon: No party stand on political Cha-cha

MANILA, Philippines - Making changes in the political provisions of the Constitution to allow the president to seek a second term is not in the order of business of the ruling Liberal Party (LP), Senate President Franklin Drilon said yesterday.

“None. There is no official party stance. We have not discussed that,” Drilon, an LP executive committee member, said when sought for comment on insinuations that the LP is spearheading efforts to include political provisions in the planned Charter amendment.

Some administration allies in the House of Representatives are initiating amendments to the economic provisions in the Constitution.

Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. has been assuring critics of the administration that any changes in the Charter would be limited to its restrictive economic provisions.

Drilon said he sees no problem with introducing changes in the Constitution but only in its economic provisions. He said the Senate would do its part to speed up the process.

“I think we still have time,” the Senate President said on the sidelines of the briefing of the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) on the 2015 National Expenditure Program (NEP) at the Senate yesterday. “But that is speculation on my part.”

Drilon said he and Belmonte had already discussed the matter. “Our agreement with Speaker Belmonte is that once they have passed their proposed amendment in the House, we will work on it in the Senate, insofar as the phrase, ‘unless otherwise provided by law,’ on the economic provisions of the Constitution (is concerned),” Drilon explained.

He said that any attempt by House members to tinker with the political provisions of the Constitution would not easily get support from the Senate.

“I think we have proposed early on that the process should follow legislation, except that there is a qualified majority. There are built-in checks and balances,” Drilon said.

“For example, presently you can’t be assured that once a bill is passed in the House, it will be passed in the Senate. That is precisely the system that we have. There are checks and balance present between the two Houses,” the Senate president added.

Sen. Francis Escudero, for his part, reiterated his opposition to lifting the six-year term limit of the president or clipping the powers of the judiciary through Charter change.

Asked what he thought was President Aquino’s reason for floating the possibility of his seeking reelection, Escudero said the Chief Executive might be trying to impress upon the people that he is not yet a lame duck president with only two years left in the position. 

“The President and his family have already given their share and more to the country. He deserves to get his own life back, and I think he is looking forward to that day to come in 2016,” the senator said.

Belmonte’s commitment

At the House of Representatives, Belmonte vowed to shoot down any attempt in the chamber to include the lifting of term limits of officials in the planned Charter change.

The House leader issued the statement as the chamber starts on Tuesday its plenary debates on Resolution of Both Houses No. 1 (RBH 1), which seeks to ease the restrictive economic provisions amid growing fears that some stalwarts of the LP would insert clauses to extend President Aquino’s term and shortcut the process of political Charter change.

“If there’s any move to insert amendments directly to the plenary without filing a measure, and with the absence of committee consultations, it won’t fly – we would oppose that,” Belmonte told reporters.

The RBH 1 seeks to include the phrase “unless otherwise provided by law” in certain provisions that restrict foreign ownership to some industries, which means the limitations remain until Congress enacts laws to remove them.

Some leaders of the chamber earlier said they would try to speed up the passage of the resolution to insulate it from attempts to undertake political Charter change.

Authors of the resolution, headed by Belmonte and Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales Jr., earlier said they chose to propose amendments to the Constitution through legislation to allow the proposal to be discussed in an objective and sober manner in public hearings.

Gonzales said RBH 1 has managed to hurdle the committee hearings without opposition as it was non-political, and that House leaders have taken pains to assure the public that the political provisions of the Constitution would not be tampered with.

But he said nothing would stop his colleagues from the LP, led Caloocan City Rep. Edgar Erice, from calling for the insertion of provisions to extend Aquino’s term during the period of amendments in plenary.

“It’s up to the body to decide to set it or nor. But as I have said, at the end of the day we’re going to need three-fourths vote (of the House to approve it),” Gonzales told reporters.

He said approving amendments to the political provisions of the Constitution would be difficult, as “no political party in the House starting with the LP can do it alone.”

He said aside from the LP, the proponents of lifting term limits must get the support of other parties in the majority coalition like the Nationalist People’s Coalition, the National Unity Party, the Nacionalista Party, the Centrist Democratic Party, as well as various party-list groups.

“If you can’t build a consensus, then you know what’s going to happen,” Gonzales said.

Erice has said he is tempted to take the option of inserting his controversial proposal in RBH 1.

“But I don’t think I’d to that because that’s a ‘fast break’ and that’s going to be disliked by the people,” Erice said.

He said he would be filing next week another resolution for political Charter change, citing results of consultations with his constituents showing the majority of them in favor of allowing Aquino to serve another term.

 Meanwhile, Valenzuela City Rep. Sherwin Gatchalian urged Aquino yesterday to focus on more important tasks like creating more jobs instead of contemplating another term.

– With Paolo Romero, Aurea Calica