PIRMA lead convenor Noel Oñate also discloses in a Senate hearing that they spent P55 million for a paid advertisement on the supposed 'failures' of the Constitution to highlight the need for charter change
(Senate PRIB / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN)
Drilon echoed other senators’ concern over Garbin’s claim his panel was already sitting as a Constituent Assembly (Con-Ass) when congressmen resumed the hearing on proposed amendments to the “restrictive” economic provisions in the Constitution.
“Cong. Garbin is wrong. The congressmen and senators were elected as members of Congress and as legislators to enact ordinary laws, not as members of a constituent assembly to propose amendments to the constitution,” Drilon said in a statement.
Drilon reiterated that in order that the House and the Senate can propose amendments to the Constitution, Congress with the two houses voting separately “must convert itself through a resolution into a constituent assembly.”
Senate President Vicente Sotto III
(Alexis Nuevaespaña/ Senate PRIB / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN)
Sotto on Wednesday questioned how some members of the House of Representatives could claim such when the 18th Congress has yet to resume sessions.
“Huh! How? They are yet to convene on Monday the 18th. How can they sit as Con-Ass? Somebody’s got it wrong!” he told the Manila Bulletin in a text message when asked to comment on the development.
“How can you convert into a Constituent Assembly when you have not convened yet in plenary?”
“He is wrong,” he said of Garbin.
According to Sotto, a long-time lawmaker, a resolution should first be passed or adopted in plenary before a Congress body either the Senate or the House can convene itself into a Con-Ass. Congressional committees cannot convene a Con-Ass on their own, he said.