House panel: Legislative Cha-cha won’t violate law

MANILA, Philippines - The House committee on constitutional amendments has taken the position that Charter change (Cha-cha) via the legislative process will not violate the Constitution.

“It’s perfectly constitutional,” Rep. Rodel Batocabe of party-list group Ako Bicol said yesterday in response to questions raised by Akbayan Rep. Ibarra Gutierrez.

Batocabe was defending Joint Resolution No. 1 for the constitutional amendments committee chaired by Davao City Rep. Mylene Albano-Garcia, who defended the measure when the House opened floor debates on the measure last week.

The resolution, authored principally by Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., proposes to introduce a simple amendment that would empower Congress to relax certain economic provisions of the Charter that limit foreign ownership of land and businesses.

The present restrictions remain, but the phrase “unless otherwise provided by law” would be inserted to empower the legislature to ease the prohibitions.

Batocabe said the Constitution provides that Congress may propose amendments by a three-fourths vote of all its members, with the House and the Senate voting separately.

“It does not require us to convene as a constituent assembly (con-ass) to propose Charter changes. The manner of proposing amendments is all up to us, members of Congress,” he said.

Thus, he said the House has chosen to seek an amendment through the Belmonte resolution via the legislative route, a mode supported by the Senate.

“The moment we propose Charter change, we are exercising our constituent power. We don’t have to declare it, in the same manner that we don’t have to declare that we are an impeachment assembly when we are impeaching an impeachable officer,” he stressed.

Batocabe cited the view raised by Ateneo law dean emeritus Fr. Joaquin Bernas and former Supreme Court justice Adolf Azcuna in the 1986 Constitutional Commission (Con-Com) that Congress can propose constitutional amendments via the legislative route.

Gutierrez expressed apprehension that the failure of the House and the Senate to meet as a con-ass might be challenged before the Supreme Court, and the time, money and effort spent for legislative Cha-cha might go to waste.

But Batocabe said the high court should uphold the power of Congress to propose amendments, as long as it obtains three-fourths vote of all its members with the House and the Senate voting separately.

Gutierrez cited the statements made by former Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, who asserted that legislative Cha-cha is constitutionally flawed.

Lagman had said proposing constitutional amendments “is an exercise of constituent power.”

“Perforce, Congress must meet as a constituent assembly to validate any proposed amendment,” he said.   

He said the Supreme Court set a distinction in a 1967 case between the function of Congress as a law-making body and its power as an amendment-proposing assembly.

He pointed out that the SC ruled that the authority to propose Charter change “is not included in the general grant of legislative powers to Congress.”