Senate to drop charter change if joint vote — Senator

AN OPPOSITION senator has raised the possibility of charter change being stopped on its tracks, with the Senate abandoning this legislative priority of the Duterte administration if the House of Representatives insists on a joint congressional vote as a constituent assembly.

Congress convening as a constituent assembly is the preferred mode for amending or changing the Constitution, as opposed to the costlier option of holding a constitutional convention.

“If it’s a con-ass,...I think we’re going to push for voting separately and we won’t allow voting jointly...to happen,” Senator Paolo Benigno A. Aquino IV said in an interview e-mailed to the media.

Mr. Aquino belongs to the opposition Liberal Party (LP). Although any congressional agenda is very much determined by the majority, the charter change hearings scheduled in the Senate will be led by Mr. Aquino’s allies in the LP, which has been vocal in its objection to a joint vote by Congress on charter change. “In the Constitution, tahimik

iyong Constitution about this (the Constitution is silent about this), and it will probably take maybe the Supreme Court to come up and say it’s actually voting jointly or voting separately,” Mr. Aquino said.

“My take is that, if it’s voting jointly, I don’t think the Senate will even open up this process,” he also said, adding that this stand is “nonnegotiable.”

Other senators have also spoken up in behalf of protecting the Senate’s integrity.

For his part, Senator Panfilo M. Lacson said he will file next week a resolution that would authorize the Senate to convene itself as a constituent assembly.

“The resolution that I will file will convene the Senate, as upper chamber, into a constitutent assembly,” Mr. Lacson said at a forum on Thursday. “We want to vote separately,” he added.

“Because if the House and Senate will convene as a constituent assembly, as one, there will be no check and balance. First and foremost, we will be outnumbered by the congressmen,” Mr. Lacson explained further.

Senate President Aquilino L. Pimentel III had also said earlier he would file a resolution for the Senate to convene as a constitutional assembly.

In her statement, Senator Grace Poe- Llamanzares for her part said: “(S)hould my fellow senators collectively decide to agree to a constitutional assembly, I support the position of Senator Ping Lacson that the bicameral congress should vote separately as was actually intended by the framers of the charter.”

“Any move for a literal interpretation that would obliterate the relevance of the entire Senate by the 300-member lower House in the voting must be rejected for being contrary to spirit of the 1987 Constitution,” she also said.