House plenary tackles Cha-cha

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives will start plenary debates today on economic Charter amendments contained in Resolution of Both Houses 7 (RBH7) that the committee of the whole approved last week, relaxing restrictive economic provisions in the 1987 Constitution.

Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales Jr., one of the main authors of RBH7, said the plenary will tackle Committee Report 985, which endorsed the approval of the resolution “without amendment.”

“In plenary, the proponents of the economic Charter changes will defend their proposals. The plan is to have three days of debates, with the second-reading vote set shortly after the termination of discussions and the period for amendments on the third day,” he said.

The House targets the second reading approval of RBH7 by Wednesday, according to Deputy Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II of Mandaluyong City, who presided over the committee of the whole.

Gonzales expects the deliberations to be shorter than the proceedings of the committee, which conducted six days of marathon and extensive hearings on the proposed amendments to which resource persons and experts were invited.

The House is sticking with its original timeline of approving the proposed amendments on third and final reading before the Holy Week, after which it would send RBH7 to the Senate for its concurrence.

Speaker Martin Romualdez earlier expressed confidence that the Senate, despite apprehensions of Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri, would be able to obtain the needed 18 votes, or three-fourths of all its members, to adopt the economic Charter change proposals.

Rep. LRay Villafuerte of the second district of Camarines Sur said he was “taking Sen. Sonny Angara’s word for it that certain senators opposing this measure could still change their mind,” where senators may be “swayed by the arguments they will hear in the coming weeks and months.”

Angara, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, also heads the subcommittee on constitutional amendments and revision of codes.

Villafuerte is also banking on Zubiri’s “leadership in the Senate to work on his peers” to get the three-fourths majority vote behind RBH6, given that he is the principal author of this measure, and had committed the Senate’s action on this resolution in a meeting with President Marcos.

Another administration legislator, Rep. Janette Garin of Iloilo’s first district, refuted as a “big lie” claims made by the opposition Makabayan bloc that amending the restrictive economic provisions in the Constitution will only worsen inflation in the country.

“It’s very simple. If we have competition then prices are expected to go down. It’s as simple as that. Let’s not fool our people. Perhaps some people don’t really understand the meaning of inflation,” Garin reiterated. “How can prices go up if many are selling the same items?”

Constitutional convention

President Marcos should “lead the push” for constitutional convention (con-con) as the method to amend the Constitution, according to former Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) chairman Grego Belgica.

“The President is in a position where he can unite our government and our people in advancing this cause. This may well be his legacy that he can pass down to the next generation,” Belgica said.

He believed that con-con would be the best method to make changes in the Constitution because it would address the corruption problem that continues to persist in the country. — Evelyn Macairan