Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said he is in favor of overhauling the entire 1987 Charter instead of introducing changes “piece-by-piece.”
He made the recommendation to overhaul the Constitution at the Senate Constitutional Amendments committee hearing on Friday.
For Pimentel, the ideal set-up is a parliamentary rule, citing Cebu, particularly traffic. He said it is no longer the concern of the national government when it comes to Cebu’s traffic woes.
He said he welcomes the idea of shifting the country’s form of government to parliamentary with a unicameral system, in contrast to today’s presidential-bicameral system, ABS-CBN News reported.
The “opening” of the Constitution must also include revising the party-list system, Pimentel said.
Panel chair Sen. Robin Padilla meantime said he will conduct a nationwide consultation on the charter change issue, ABS-CBN News further reported.
Padilla on Friday meanwhile aired his dismay over the failure of some officials of the Executive department to attend the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes hearing on possible enhancements to the Constitution.
While Padilla reminded these officials to show interest and attend the hearing, he noted the lack of coordination between the Executive and Legislative would not happened if the Philippines adopted a parliamentary system.
“I cannot understand why the Senate has difficulty in inviting other secretaries,” he said.
The neophyte senator said the 1987 Constitution says the Legislative and Executive are coequal.
“But the Executive department’s representatives who were invited do not show up. This cannot be set aside because this is the Constitution,” Padilla said at the start of the hearing.
“I wish we were in a Parliamentary system because they would have been obliged to show up. We can exchange views with them and have a healthy exchange,” he added.
Padilla read the contents of a letter from the Department of Energy where it said its invited representative cannot attend the hearing. It asked that it be allowed to submit “written comments at a later date after due internal study.”
He said a sensitive topic like the Constitution merits the interest of all stakeholders.
“I want to make sure our hearings are balanced. We might as well shift to Parliamentary so we won’t have all this ‘hiding’ because I don’t
like ‘hiding,” he said.
Supporting Padilla was Senate minority leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, who attended the hearing.
Senator Ronald dela Rosa added that coequal branches of government “should respect each other.”
For his part, Sen. Francis Tolentino agreed with Padilla’s observation.