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[av_heading heading=’Congress must ‘dance same dance’ for Cha-Cha’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”][/av_heading]
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January 19, 2018
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MANILA – The two chambers of Congress must agree whether to vote jointly or separately to amend the 1987 Constitution.
“We have to follow the same procedure to have proposed amendments to the Constitution. Kung wala, wala (If we don’t, we can’t propose amendments),” Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III told the press after the third Senate hearing into charter change (Cha-Cha).
“If Cha-Cha is a dance, the two partners must dance the same dance,” he added. “If they’re dancing different dances, then we don’t have a Cha-Cha.”
Sen. Panfilo Lacson on Monday filed a resolution asking the Senate to convene in a constitutional assembly (Con-Ass) and vote separately.
The following day, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution to convene in a Con-Ass and vote jointly.
Pimentel said he would wait until the Senate receives a copy of the House resolution before making any effort to act on it.
“Hintayin muna natin (Let’s wait for) whatever they passed, and they will communicate it to the Senate officially and formally,” Pimentel said.
Meanwhile, the consensus of the Senate during Tuesday’s caucus was to vote separately.
“All senators believe that voting should be [done] separately. We have a bicameral conference committee mechanism to harmonize versions,” the Senate president said.
“We cannot be physically joined together kasi (because) it goes against the final act of voting separately. It’s too difficult to reconcile you’re together in one place yet, at the very end, you will vote separately,” he added.
At the Senate hearing on Cha-Cha, most legal experts – including two former Supreme Court chief justices, Hilario Davide Jr. and Reynato Puno, and former Senate president Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr. – agreed that voting should be done separately.
But Davide insisted that Cha-Cha was unnecessary. Puno and Pimentel both favored amending the Constitution but via constitutional convention (Con-Con), not Con-Ass. (PNA)
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