House doing Cha-cha as ConAss
The House of Representatives has started working as a Constituent Assembly (ConAss) and has set February, 2019, as the target date of submitting a new Constitution.
Rep. Vicente Veloso, chairman of the House Committee on Constitutional Revision, said Tuesday
that the adoption of House Joint Resolution No. 19 last February serves as the basis for the chamber to amend the 1987 Constitution.
Veloso, together with Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo Benitez, said former Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel Jr. is aware of the move to convene into a ConAss to approve a new Constitution through ordinary legislative process.
“Let’s approach the Charter change (Cha-cha) as if we are legislating a statute,” said Veloso, quoting Pimentel’s word during a meeting on Charter revision.
“The Lower House intends to approve a Charter in this (17th) Congress so that it could be transmitted to the Senate by February, 2019,” Veloso, a retired Court of Appeals justice, said.
“We are operating as a Constituent Assembly. There is no need for us to physically join Senate in an assembly,” he added.
He stressed that the House is now exercising its constituent authority to revise the 31-year-old Charter.
Veloso admitted that the proposed House version of the Charter drops vice president as a successor to the president under the transitory provision contained in Resolution of Both Houses No. 15.
But he dismissed as “unfair” the accusations that former President and now Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was behind this controversial provision of the proposed Charter.
“We have been unfair to the Speaker, ang contribution lamangni Speaker Arroyo is Article 12 on local government and federal government,” Veloso explained.
He was referring to an article that ignored other proposals seeking to identify 14 federal states in the proposed Charter.
Arroyo’s proposal allows Congress to pass statutes for the creation of federal states.
The Lower House, however, found itself the butt of criticisms for providing in its draft the removal of Vice President Leni Robredo from the line of succession during the transition period to federalism because of the pending electoral protest filed against her by former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
Section 4, Article XVII (Transitory Provisions) of the draft constitution which was sponsored in the plenary last Monday night provides that upon ratification of the new constitution, the incumbent President and Vice President “shall continue to exercise all the powers and functions of their offices until the election of the next President and Vice President.”
It states that “in case a vacancy arises by reason of removal, resignation, permanent incapacity or death of the incumbent President, the incumbent Senate President shall act as President until a President shall have been chosen and qualified.”
The draft constitution will be submitted to the Senate for concurrence after it is adopted by the House.
Veloso said the provision was included in the draft charter to avoid instability because of the ongoing electoral protest.
He admitted that the questionable succession provision belonged to PDPLaban, which formed as one of the basis for the draft of a new Constitution now under plenary deliberation.