House leaders deny term extension, Senate abolition in Cha-cha efforts

Political party leaders in the House of Representatives said Monday that their efforts to amend the 1987 Constitution does not seek to lift term limits or remove their Senate counterparts.

The House members issued the statement in response to former president Rodrigo Duterte’s allegations that allies of President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr. in the House are pushing for Charter change to perpetuate the Marcos family in power.

Last week, all 24 senators adopted a manifesto condemning the signature campaign for a people’s initiative for Charter Change (Cha-cha), saying the House is out to abolish the Senate given that the document for signature asks voters to if they are in favor of amending the Charter to allow members of Congress to jointly vote on Constitutional amendments, a setup which would consider the vote of 24 Senators and more than 300 House members.

“If you read again [our proposal under Resolution of Both Houses 6], it’s only economic provisions. And we haven’t transmitted anything to the Senate that contained political amendments. You can check the records of the Senate,” Zamboanga City District Representative Manuel Jose “Mannix” Dalipe said.

RBH 6, adopted by the House in March last year, seeks to amend the economic provisions of the Constitution by electing delegates to a Constitutional Convention, whose members will draft the new Constitution.

Dalipe said that during the 18th Congress—preceding Marcos' election in 2022—the House also adopted RBH 2, which seeks to amend the economic provisions of the Constitution with Congress convening as Constituent Assembly and the House and the Senate voting separately.

Both of these Resolutions did not gain ground in the Senate.

“They are all economic [provisions]. Kaya iyong mga nagsasabi na that is to perpetuate the President or whoever is in power, maybe they are in a different dimension. Baka fentanyl,” Dalipe said, echoing Marcos' response to Duterte's tirade.

The former president had accused his successor Marcos of being a drug addict and being on the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency’s (PDEA) narcolist, which the PDEA denied.

Marcos, Jr. responded by saying that Duterte's remarks must be due to fentanyl, a powerful painkiller that the latter has acknowledged using, as prescribed by his doctors.

House constitutional amendments panel chairman Rufus Rodriguez and Rizal lawmaker Jack Duavit, for their part, said that the House will never seek the abolition of their Senate counterpart.

“That [we are after Senate abolition] is the farthest from the truth. We have no plans of abolishing the Senate. We need the Senate, we need this body to be able to have check and balance. They are afraid of their own shadow, That is the situation now,” Rodriguez said.

“With regard to the fears and allegations that the House would want to abolish the Senate, we would just like to let everybody know that as far as our party is concerned, there is no way we will be voting in any form to remove our five senators,” Duavit, a stalwart of Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), said in reference to five Senators who are his party-mates in NPC.

“If we are not going to remove our five senators, then the other 19 senators can be assured. We're here to commit that the abolition of the Senate won’t be done when we do amend the Constitution,” Duavit added. — BM, GMA Integrated News