SP Chiz scuttles RBH 6 hearings

Newly installed Senate President Francis Escudero said he would let neither colors nor groupings divide the Upper Chamber under his leadership.

“There’ll be no my team or your team for me. I will look at every one of us as one Senate,” Escudero said in his acceptance speech shortly after he took his oath as Senate President.

“And if you carry any colors, for me those colors should symbolize the flag of the Philippines,” he said. “I look forward to working with each and every member of Congress, whether majority or minority.”

Reiterating his stance against amending the Constitution, Escudero nonetheless hinted it’s a matter to be decided by the majority, whom he said he would consult.

Erstwhile Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said his own reluctance to pursue amending the Constitution touched off the moves to remove him, with the so-called PDEA or Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency leaks proving to be the last straw.

Following Zubiri’s resignation, Senator Sonny Angara also stepped down as chair of the subcommittee on constitutional amendments and revision of codes — the panel leading the Senate Charter change hearings.

Angara completed six public hearings on Resolution of Both Houses 6 (RBH 6), which seeks to relax the foreign equity restrictions on public utilities, higher education, and the advertising sector. The latest hearing was conducted in Baguio City on 17 May.

The subcommittee had scheduled back-to-back hearings in Cebu City for the Visayas on 23 May and Cagayan de Oro for Mindanao on 24 May. Escudero said the hearings on RHB 6 would be “temporarily stopped.”

“We will not hold any such hearings outside of Metro Manila or inside the Senate either and we will formally make known our decision as a group and as a Senate with respect to this,” he said.

In the PDEA leaks probe presided over by Senator Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa, an ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte, an agent claimed that Marcos was the target of a buy-bust operation or raid as laid down in a PDEA pre-ops plan.

“We will discuss it on the part of the majority but you know my position and I have no plans of changing my position,” he said. “And I think I was one of the more vocal ones during that time. So I don’t see any reason why there should be concerns about that.”