Senate sees end of RBH talk in Oct., 7 months after House
House leaders reminded senators that the 1987 Constitution is silent on whether Congress should vote separately or as one on proposed Charter amendments.
Senior Deputy Speaker and Pampanga Rep. Aurelio Gonzales Jr. and Deputy Majority Leader and Tingog party-list Rep. Jude Acidre cautioned the Senate, which said it will finish deliberations in October or seven months after the self-imposed deadline of the House in April, against insisting on a separate vote.
“Our basic law does not say whether the House of Representatives and the Senate have to vote jointly or separately on Charter change,” Gonzales said.
“Voting separately–that provision is being added by the Senate to our Constitution. For us in the House of Representatives, we stand with what’s written in the Constitution,” Acidre said.
The two lawmakers were reacting to Senator Jinggoy Estrada’s concerns regarding the Lower Chamber’s Resolution of Both Houses No. 7 that requires all members of Congress to vote jointly on proposed economic amendments to the 1987 Constitution.
Gonzales said Section 1, Article XVll (Amendments and Revisions) of the Charter states: “Any amendment to, or revision, of the Constitution may be proposed by: 1) The Congress, upon a vote of three-fourths of all its members…”
RBH No. 7 is almost an exact reproduction of RBH No. 6, introduced in the Upper Chamber by Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri and Senators Loren Legarda and Juan Edgardo Angara.
The proposed House and Senate changes are on the grant of legislative franchises to and ownership of public utilities in Article Xll, and ownership of basic educational facilities in Article XlV and advertising firms in Article XVl.
The suggested principal amendments are the insertion of the phrase, “unless otherwise provided by law,” which would empower Congress to lift or relax present economic restrictions in the nation’s basic law, and the addition of the qualifier “basic” in Article XlV.
Gonzales said while their resolution is almost a word-for-word reproduction of RBH No. 6, they dropped the phrase “each House voting separately.”
“Those four words are not in the Constitution. Our colleagues in the Senate cannot and should not insist on that language. I am not a lawyer, but that is unconstitutional, as lawyers would say. We in the House chose to be true to our basic law by quoting exactly what it says, no more, no less,” he said.
As this developed, Angara said the Senate is looking at a possible October deadline to finish hearings on RBH No. 6.
The new deadline is seven months after the March timeline originally set by senators themselves.
The House Committee of the Whole, on the other hand, will start discussions on RBH No. 7 next week and may finish after three hearings or before Congress goes on Holy Week break next month.
Angara said to save public funds and since the Constitution gives a 60 to 90 day timetable for the plebiscite, it should be “ideally conducted along with the 2025 elections.”
However, the Commission on Elections earlier said it cannot hold a plebiscite next year to amend the 1987 Constitution given that there are already two scheduled polls in 2025.
“You cannot squeeze in a plebiscite in the middle of an election. Even prior to 2025, you cannot do that… And we cannot divert any of the funds in the possession of Comelec. That is contained in the General Appropriation Act,” Comelec chairman George Garcia said.
The poll body, he said, is preparing for the May 2025 midterm elections and the December 2025 barangay elections.
Efforts to amend the Charter through a people’s initiative,constitutional convention, or a constituent assembly would culminate in a plebiscite.
Garcia, however, cited a Supreme Court ruling, which states that the Comelec “cannot include a plebiscite for the amendment of the constitution on a regular election.”