THE House of Representatives will prioritize the passage of the 2017 national budget over efforts to rewrite the 1987 Constitution, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said on Tuesday.
Alvarez said Congress needed to finish the deliberations on next year’s national budget before it could actually schedule discussions on the proposed Charter Change towards federalism.
“Between now and November, we will prioritize deliberations for the national budget for 2017. After that…maybe in January [next year], we can talk about the revision of the Constitution,” the Speaker told reporters at the sidelines of his meeting on Cha-Cha with Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III and other Congress leaders at EDSA Shangri-La Hotel Tuesday.
Still, he said, the issue whether lawmakers and senators will vote separately or jointly as a Constituent Assembly body for the revision of the Constitution was secondary to beginning Charter Change by January next year.
“The voting is the least of our worries. What is more important is the content of the new Constitution,” Alvarez added.
Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno is expected to submit to Congress on August 15 President Rodrigo Duterte’s proposed P3.35-trillion national budget.
Next year’s national budget will be 11.6 percent higher than the P3.002 trillion national budget for this year.
“We’ll concentrate on the budget now but we can brush up on the Constitution and other urgent laws,” Alvarez said.
“So far we have not yet reached any agreement on Cha-Cha. But I am confident we will not have a problem for as along as the intentions are the same–[which is to amend the Constitution towards federalism],” he told reporters.
Alvarez said the House will be willing to accommodate the Senate’s demands.
He maintained he would ask the President to create through an executive order a 20-member Constitutional Commission to help Congress, acting as a Constituent Assembly, draft the proposed charter changes.
Alvarez earlier said the creation of the commission would help allay reservations about amending the Charter through a Constituent Assembly instead of a Constitutional Convention.
He has said the commission should include constitutional law experts like former Supreme Court chief justice Reynato Puno, former senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr., lawyer Reuben Canoy and San Beda Law School dean Fr. Ranhilio Aquino, as well as representatives from non-governmental organizations, the academe, and other sectors of society.
Alvarez stressed that he saw no legal impediment against the creation of such a commission through an executive order of the President because it is still Congress, acting as Constituent Assembly that would discuss and approve the proposed Charter changes.