Lawmaker denies GMA wants term extension

A pro-administration congressman slammed Sen. Joker Arroyo yesterday for allegedly misleading the public on the congressional initiatives to amend the 1987 Constitution.

House Deputy Speaker Raul Gonzalez (Lakas-CMD, Iloilo) said the senator invented the fiction that President Arroyo wants her term extended as part of a planned transition to a parliamentary government.

"I don’t know what has gotten into him (Senator Arroyo)," an angry Gonzalez said. "Term extension was never in the proposal nor in its intention. It has never been envisioned at all."

The Iloilo lawmaker said that in several bicameral congressional hearings and meetings on Charter change (Cha-cha) resolutions, it was clear to senators and congressmen that the May 10, 2004 elections would push through and that there would be no term extensions.

Gonzalez said he could not explain why Arroyo would issue such statements except that the senator may have wanted to confuse the public.

He noted that Senator Arroyo was a member of former President Corazon Aquino’s Cabinet in the 1980s and "maybe he does not want it touched only for some personal reasons that is not helpful to the country."

Gonzalez asked the senator to stop muddling the Cha-cha issue, stressing that the people will still directly elect a president in a parliamentary government.

The House passed last March Concurrent Resolution No. 16 seeking to convene Congress into a constituent assembly to amend the Constitution but the Senate has not approved the counterpart resolution filed by Senators Edgardo Angara and Robert Barbers.

Meanwhile, Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. said the President is preparing the ground for "a third wave of reforms," including amending the Constitution, to strengthen the gains made since 1986.

In his remarks before the American Electronics Association in San Jose, California, De Venecia said the first two waves were launched by Aquino and her predecessor, Fidel Ramos.

Mrs. Arroyo is implementing the third wave which includes waging an all-out war against drug syndicates and forging peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the New People’s Army, he said.

De Venecia said the "grandmother of all reforms" is the initiative to amend certain provisions of the Constitution to address what he called the "greatest crisis of the Filipino people."

"The only presidential system in our part of the world — those of the Philippines and Indonesia — are also among the worst performing economies in the region," De Venecia said.