House confident of Senate passing RBH 6

A leader of the House of Representatives on Thursday expressed optimism the Senate will eventually approve the Resolution of Both Houses No. 6, or RBH 6.

House Deputy Majority Leader Jude Acidre said he believed Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri could shepherd his peers through to passing the counterpart measure to the House’s own Resolution of Both Houses No. 7, or RBH 7.

Zubiri authored RBH 6 with Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda and Senator Juan Edgardo Angara, the chairperson of a sub-committee tackling the move to amend “restrictive” economic provisions in the 1987 Constitution.

“For RBH 7, as far as the House is concerned, we already fulfilled our mandate. Now we’re looking [at] our friends in the upper house to what they will do because, as they insist, Congress is a bicameral body, and the action of the House has to be reciprocated by the Senate,” Acidre told the media.

“Knowing that, as [RBH 6] states, this is something that will be good for the country. That’s what they wrote in their counterpart resolution in the whereas clause,” he added.

The House passed RBH 7 on the third and final reading during Congress’ last session day on Wednesday before going into a month-long Holy Week break.

RBH 7 received 289 affirmative votes, seven negative votes, and two abstentions.

While the House and the Senate, which have been locked in a verbal duel over the past months regarding Charter change, have reached a “consensus” to amend only the economic provisions of the Constitution, Acidre said RBH 6 must be passed before the sine die adjournment in May to insulate it from political innuendo.

“The instructions of Speaker (Martin Romualdez), the guidance of the Speaker, is to give as much time as the Senate requires in support of the President. However, we have to understand there is a limited timeframe to do this,” he said.