'Additional House seats ill-timed'

BALER, Aurora, Philippines – The proposal of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile for 100 additional seats in Congress may be a brilliant and well-intentioned idea but it is ill-timed.

This was the opinion of House Deputy Majority Leader Juan Edgardo Angara who said that the proposal, while necessary, suffers from wrong timing.

“Numerically, we really need to have additional seats in the House of Representatives. It’s long overdue. But the timing is really off because of the fiscal deficit. I think it will worsen the fiscal deficit,” he told reporters.    

Angara, son of Sen. Edgardo Angara, acknowledged that without creating new congressional districts, certain provinces in the country suffer from under-representation. He said that when a certain area is under-represented, this set-up is undemocratic.

“There is really a felt need for more congressional districts but this would be another burden on the shoulders of Juan dela Cruz,” he said.

He said that the Constitution provides for congressional re-districting after every census. “In this case, we have undergone two census already yet there has been nop re-districting,” he said.

The law allows reapportioning of areas with a population of 250,000 into a congressional district.

He said that the government should find the right timing when to undertake re-districting.

The congressman said that what the government should do is to implement re-districting on a piecemeal basis, first in areas where there is gross under-representation.