The House of Representatives’ committee on constitutional amendments is now focused on convincing the Senate into convening Congress as a Constituent Assembly to begin amendments to the 1987 Constitution.
This developed Wednesday after Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo told the committee, chaired by Leyte Rep. Vicente Veloso, to withhold deliberations on the proposed shift to federalism, and leave the matter to the future assembly or “Con-Ass.”
The committee on Tuesday met behind closed doors with members of the presidential Consultative Committee to discuss how the legislature will be able to convince senators to form the assembly that would tackle the proposed shift to a federal system of government.
The Con-Com, formed by President Rodrigo Duterte, had already submitted its draft federal Constitution to the Chief Executive and leaders of the House and the Senate.
Arroyo joined that meeting and said she favors separate voting for both chambers to begin the task of rewriting the Charter.
Veloso had maintained the House and the Senate must discuss proposed changes together in the Con-Ass, though the two chambers would still vote separately.
Veloso cited House Resolution 2056 authored by Arroyo, where the former President and Pampanga lawmaker said: “There is an urgent need to convene the Senate and the House of Representatives as Constituent Assembly in order to consider the proposed amendments to the 1987 Constitution.”
“It is incorrect for anybody to say that this is only the view of the Speaker. Because if this is adopted by the House of Representatives, it will be the collective view of the House, binding on the part of the House, that as the Constituent Assembly convened, we shall eventually be voting separately,” Veloso said.
Convening Congress into an assembly is necessary because it will shorten the time needed to rewrite the Constitution, the Leyte solon said.
The House and the Senate could proceed with the substance of the proposed provisions as soon as the two chambers sit as a ConAss, he added.
“We cannot tackle the substance without settling first the matter of how to go about it, how to receive your proposal,” Veloso said.
He also stressed the need for the country to adopt a federal system to “dismantle the highly centralized government” and the unequal distribution of wealth and representation in the country.
“There is really a need for us to federalize. There is really a need for us to distribute the number of senators that we have regardless of the voting population. There is a need for us to find a way that our people in various regions are equally represented. And we can have this only through federalized government,” Veloso said.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Veloso’s panel also sorted the proposals of the Con-Com, such as the division of the nation’s resources and the establishment of an Equalization Fund for federal states that might not be able to survive on their own.
Con-Com member and former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr. noted that under the proposed federal system, the overall resources of the country shall be divided 50-50 between the national government and the federal states.
In contrast, the Local Government Code currently mandates a 60-40 sharing of the tax collections of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
“Instead of collections only from the BIR, all income and resources of the government will now be divided 50-50. And three percent of the national budget will go to Equalization Fund to make sure it will be able to respond to the demands of the less developed federal states,” Pimentel told the House committee.
The panel also discussed the structure of the federal government, its distribution of powers, and sources of revenue.