Senate’s RBH 6 ‘unconstitutional’

Leaders of the House of Representatives yesterday asked senators to stop insisting that Congress, sitting as a Constituent Assembly to amend the 1987 Constitution, should vote separately.

Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales Jr. said a wide and gaping chasm exists between the Senate’s Resolution of Both Houses, or RBH 6, and its House of Representatives counterpart, RBH 7.

Senators have warned that the two chambers voting as one under a ConAss would allow the House to outvote them and railroad the amendments to the Constitution.

Two days after the filing of RBH 7, it came under attack from senators like Jinggoy Estrada, who insisted that “we (senators and House members) have to vote separately.”

RBH 7 mimics RBH 6, but only insofar as it proposes amendments to certain economic provisions on public services, education, and the advertising industry.

Gonzales said the Senate’s RBH 6 prescribes “each House voting separately,” vis-a-vis RBH 7’s stipulation that amendments would be done “upon a vote of three-fourths of all its members,” meaning joint voting.

“Those four words (each House voting separately) are not in the Constitution. Our colleagues in the Senate cannot and should not insist on that language,” Gonzales said.

“I am not a lawyer, but that is unconstitutional, as lawyers would say,” he averred, stressing that RBH 7 complies with the Constitution, in fact, “quoting exactly what it says, no more, no less.”

“Our basic law does not say whether the House of Representatives and the Senate have to vote jointly or separately on Charter change,” he added.

Deputy Majority Leader Jude Acidre maintained that separate voting to propose amendments is not mandated by the Constitution but is merely the interpretation of the Senate.

“The Senate just added voting separately to what is written in the Constitution. We stand by what’s written in the Constitution,” Acidre said in a press conference.

In a recent hearing at the Senate, former Supreme Court Associate Justice Vicente Mendoza maintained that the Senate and the House must vote separately in amending the restrictive economic provisions of the Constitution.

Mendoza said the two chambers “will have to meet as one body without any distinction, whether they are senators or congressmen, except when it comes time to vote.”

“They vote separately for the obvious reason that the members of the Senate are fewer than the members of the House, but otherwise, they’re required to meet as a body,” Mendoza said.

Meanwhile, Senator Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara said they would stick to their deadline for the discussions on the proposed amendments to the economic provisions of the Constitution.

According to Angara, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes, the upper chamber may conclude its discussions on RBH 6 by October.

“We already stated weeks ago that we are working on a possible October deadline at the latest since the Constitution gives a 60 to 90-day timetable for a plebiscite,” he said in a statement.

He also maintained that aligning the plebiscite for the proposed Charter change with the midterm elections next year would be more practical.

“To save the people’s money, the plebiscite is ideally conducted along with the 2025 elections,” the senator said.

According to House Majority Leader Manuel Jose “Mannix” Dalipe, one of the authors of RBH 7, the House will start its deliberations on the proposed amendments on Monday, 26 February.

Dalipe said the lower chamber is eyeing to finish its discussions on RBH 7 next month before the Holy Week.

Congress is set to take a break from 23 March to 28 April.