MANILA, Philippines — Even if he admitted Friday that the House of Representatives’ push for Charter change may not get votes in the Senate, Sen. Robinhood Padilla’s constitutional amendments panel will begin hearing the lower chamber’s proposal for a constitutional convention to be “fair” to its proponents.
Padilla’s committee will be holding its first hearing on Monday on House Bill No. 7352 which provides for the implementation of Resolution of Both Houses No. 6 that calls for a constitutional convention or a new body partly appointed and partly elected that will propose amendments or revisions to the Charter.
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Another hearing on the House measures is scheduled on Wednesday.
The senator said he has invited his counterpart in the House, Rep. Rufus Rodriguez (Cagayan de Oro), who has confirmed his attendance to Monday’s hearing. Other House members are expected to attend as well.
“What I want is for congressmen to freely speak and for senators to ask them why they chose this,” Padilla said in Filipino in a virtual briefing.
‘Scratch my back’
The senator, who is advocating solely for amendments to what he deems are “restrictive” economic provisions of the Constitution through Congress sitting as a constituent assembly, said he will be preparing a different committee report on the House proposals.
“I will be conducting a hearing on these and I will prepare a fair committee report so that the larger chamber would not be able to say anything about me,” Padilla said, stressing that he does not want to let the House proposals languish in his panel.
He explained the House will also tackle his proposal for a Cha-cha that solely tackles economic provisions should the Senate approve this and that he does not want the lower chamber to just sit on his measure.
“I don’t want them to not act on my proposal,” he said. “You scratch my back and I will scratch yours.”
‘Give Cha-cha a chance’
But as it stands, any form of Cha-cha faces a big hurdle in the Senate whose leadership has stated it is not among their priorities.
Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri has said that it would be better for the country to wait for the effective implementation of the Public Service Act, the Retail Trade Liberalization Act and the Foreign Investment Act, all of which eased economic restrictions but not those imposed by the Constitution.
Still, Padilla has been undaunted as he conducted three consultations on Cha-cha across the country, taking to Davao, Baguio and Cebu in the past weeks.
He hopes that despite stiff opposition in his chamber, senators would give Cha-cha a chance to be discussed in plenary.
“Let it come to the floor. Let us talk about it in plenary so that their positions would be official,” Padilla said. “We can’t just be talking about this in the media. The plenary is there.”