Published August 6, 2018, 7:58 PM
By Ben Rosario

The House of Representatives on Monday moved to fast track the transformation of Congress into a constituent assembly for the purpose of revising the 1987 Constitution.

Majority Leader and Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. said that a resolution will be filed today by the House Committee on Rules to convene Congress into a constituent assembly and that the two chambers will vote separately.

This move, Andaya said, will “expedite the passage” of the resolution convening Congress into a constituent assembly.

The new resolution will affirm the decision of the House leadership under Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that it will drop previous insistence that Senate and the Lower House will have to vote as one body in any Charter changer issue during the constituent assembly proceedings.

Earlier, Leyte Rep. Vicente Veloso, new chairman of the House Committee on Constitutional Revision, said the move will speed up plenary action on Charter change so that revision by the constituent assembly may be completed in two months.

Veloso said congressmen expect smooth sailing towards the bid to convene the constituent assembly, mainly because the Lower House has acceded to Senate’s position for a separate voting on Charter change questions.

Veloso predicted that Congress will be able to tackle Charter change on September and October, a month after the Lower House may have completed voting on the proposed P3.7 trillion budget for 2019.

Veloso, a retired Court of Appeals associate justice, aired the optimism that ratification of the proposed federal constitution may still be scheduled simultaneously with the mid-term elections in May, 2019.

Negros Occidental Rep. Albee Benitez, chairman of the House Committee on Housing and Urban Development, said there remains an overwhelming support for Charter change in the Lower House.

Benitez, who heads the powerful Visayan bloc of legislators, noted that the decision of House leaders to drop its previous position for a joint voting has received backing from the ruling PDP-Laban and the other political parties in the majority bloc. (Ben R.Rosario)

Former president and Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo cannot become the country’s first prime minister simply because the House of Representatives does not intend to create this position in its version of a new Constitution.

Leyte Rep. Vicente Veloso, newly-installed chairman of the House Committee on Constitutional Reform, made this disclosure in an apparent bid to belie claims by several senators that Arroyo is eyeing the post under a new federal constitution.

Veloso said the House panel is not considering the creation of a prime minister in the draft federal Constitution since its version of the Charter proposal does not provide one.

“And I think, sa tingin ko lang, I doubt the committee will be entertaining the thought that we’ll be having a Prime Minister,” Veloso said.

Arroyo has also assailed speculations that she plans to seek the post of a prime minister, saying that this can be part of a “black propaganda” aimed against her.

“Look, to begin with, the proposed Constitution is presidential federal isn’t it? So that [claim that I will become Prime Minister] is black propaganda,” Arroyo said in an ambush interview with reporters on July 27.