Senate-House dispute over Charter change voting continues

The Senate should stop vehemently asserting that Congress must vote separately to amend the 1987 Constitution, House leaders said Thursday.

The voting issue to carry on with Charter change has been a long-running dispute between the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Senators are not in favor of a joint voting or to convene the two chambers of Congress as one body in fear that they will be outnumbered by the 300-plus House members.

Two days following the filing of Resolution of Both Houses 7, the measure, initiated by House leaders, gained a mixed reaction from senators, with Senator Jinggoy Estrada insisting that "we have to vote separately."

House's RBH 7 mimicked the Senate's RBH 6, proposing amendments to certain economic provisions concerning public services, education, and the advertising industry, with the sole distinction being the manner of voting.

The House resolution stipulates Congress may propose amendments "upon a vote of three-fourths of all its members," which means voting jointly. The Senate resolution, meanwhile, prescribes "each House voting separately."

"Those four words are not in the Constitution. Our colleagues in the Senate cannot and should not insist on that language. I am not a lawyer, but that is unconstitutional, as lawyers would say," Gonzales asserted.

The House leader said their RBH 7 complies with the current constitutional provisions by "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.

In the same vein, Deputy Majority Leader Jude Acidre said separate voting to propose amendments is not mandated by the Constitution but merely an interpretation from the Senate.

"The Senate just added voting separately to what is written in the Constitution. We [at the House of Representatives] we stand with what's written in the Constitution," Acidre said in a press conference.

The RBH 7, he affirmed, is "very faithful to the wording of the Constitution."

Identical to RBH 6, RBH 7 will convene the two chambers of Congress into a constituent assembly, or con-ass, in which they will vote as one body to propose constitutional amendments.

While senators welcome the lower chamber's filing of RBH 7, Estrada posits that the "essence of bicameralism will not be enforced if that's the case."

In a recent hearing at the Senate, former Supreme Court Associate Justice Vicente Mendoza averred that the Senate and the House must vote separately in amending the restrictive economic provisions of the Charter via a con-ass.

Mendoza said the two chambers "will have to meet as one body without any distinction whether they are senators or congressman 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.

Senators expressed fierce objection to the contentious effort to revamp the Charter through people's initiative—which they alleged was orchestrated by members of the House—postulating it would eliminate the upper chamber from the equation.

Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio previously warned that members of the House could transform the current government into a parliamentary system should PI advance, making the Senate’s abolition imminent.

House leaders, however, brushed off claims they were eyeing to stamp out their counterparts in the Senate.