Pagdating sa usapin ng
bicameralism (I used to be a senator and as a former senator, I will not allow the diminution of the Senate’s power when it comes to the issue of bicameralism).”
A subcommittee to be chaired by Senator Sonny Angara was supposed to have been created to start discussions on the proposed Charter amendments. Such discussions, slated in January, were targeted to be finished by March.
On 17 January, the Commission on Elections said signatures from 300 areas pertaining to constitutional reform through a People’s Initiative had been submitted to their offices in cities and municipalities from the Cordilleras to the Bangsamoro region.
Five days later, on 22 January, Senator Ronald dela Rosa hurled allegations that Romualdez had ordered House members to gather signatures for a People’s Initiative campaign.
Dela Rosa’s charges jibed with talk of local government execs distributing petition forms and paying off people for their signatures.
The following day, amid Senator Joel Villanueva’s statement that many of his colleagues no longer saw the point in passing the Senate’s RBH 6 after learning that several House members’ aides were behind the nationwide campaign to collect people’s signatures, a manifesto was unanimously signed by the senators.
In their manifesto, the senators slammed the House for its duplicity in seeking Charter change by taking the PI route after initially agreeing to a constitutional convention.
Senators, including Deputy Majority Leader JV Ejercito, challenged Romualdez to speak up and quash the PI after he had been identified — rightly or wrongly — as being behind the signature campaign by Dela Rosa.
Romualdez instead defended the PI, saying that it is a “direct expression of the will of the people, providing a means for citizens to propose constitutional amendments.”
For his part, Albay 2nd District Representative Joey Salceda claimed in a radio interview on 24 January that the number of signatures collected — some eight million — already exceeded 12 percent of the total number of registered voters. “For the first time in our lives, why don’t we listen to the people?” he asked.
The people? Or those who paid the people for their signatures? A Pulse Asia survey on 15-19 March last year showed that 45 percent of respondents were not in favor of Charter change versus 41 percent who were. Likewise, the number of Filipinos with scant or no knowledge at all of the Constitution increased from 73 percent to 79 percent.
More recent was the OCTA Research survey on 10-14 December 2023 of 1,200 respondents the majority of whom — 73 percent — said they saw the high prices of consumer goods as “the most urgent national concern for adult Filipinos,” followed by employment and wage issues.
Pointed out OCTA Research, “changing the Constitution is not an urgent concern of adult Filipinos.” In fact, it said, “only one percent of respondents identified it as a priority concern.”
“The President, according to Zubiri, had also stressed that taking the ‘People’s Initiative’ route towards Charter change was ‘too divisive.’