Speaker Arroyo backs separate House, Senate vote to push Charter change
SPEAKER Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo supports separate voting between the Senate and House of Representatives for the approval of a new federal constitution.
“There is no timeline but we should move forward from the time when I was President. I ended my presidency with the same stalemate. You [could]remember we have the same stalemate on voting separately and voting together and a few years later we are in the same stalemate. We should move forward and the way to move forward is to agree to voting separately,” Arroyo said.
“We will work with the Senate. We want to move forward, to be realistic. [It is] better to move forward and achieve something rather than be stubborn and achieve nothing,” Arroyo said.
Former former president and House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
The 1987 Constitution allows the House and the Senate to amend the Charter by constituting themselves as a constituent assembly. The 1987 Charter, however, does not explicitly state whether the House and Senate should vote jointly or separately when it comes to amending the Constitution.
The Senators are opposed to joint voting because that would render their votes useless, considering that the House is composed of at least 292 lawmakers as against the Senate’s 24.
The shift to a federal form of government was one of the presidential campaign promises of then Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte. LLANESCA T. PANTI
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