Bicam on BBL held this week

MANILA, Philippines — The bicameral conference that would reconcile the versions of the Senate and the House of Representatives on the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) starts today at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Pasig City.

The conference will last for five days until Friday. The two chambers are hoping to agree on a final version that they could pass when they open their third and last regular session on July 23 so that President Duterte could sign it before or during his third State of the Nation Address in the afternoon of that day.

House Majority Leader, Ilocos Norte Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas and his Senate counterpart Juan Miguel Zubiri co-chair the 29-member conference committee.

The Senate-House conference committee is composed of 19 congressmen and 10 senators.

Critics of the proposed BBL said it contains several constitutionally questionable provisions, including those on taxation, shared powers between the national government and the envisioned new Bangsamoro region, definition of territory, and the creation of regional offices that duplicate the functions of constitutional commissions and national agencies.

Unless such provisions are deleted, critics have vowed to question a BBL passed by Congress and signed by the President before the Supreme Court.

During the Arroyo administration, the Supreme Court struck down the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain the government negotiated with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which called for the creation of a Bangsamoro juridical entity in place of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

The present proposed BBL and the previous BBL draft, whose approval by Congress was derailed by the Mamasapano massacre on Jan. 25, 2015, are essentially similar to that agreement.

Zubiri, who had chaired the sub-committee on the BBL in the chamber, earlier expressed optimism the bicameral committee can finish its work before the end of the week.– With Paolo Romero